


Things That Happen

by LookBehindYou



Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Implied Sexual Content, KouNoi cliché, M/M, introspective
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookBehindYou/pseuds/LookBehindYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Koujaku just can't catch a break.</p><p>Or, how Koujaku got drunk, made out with his mortal enemy and spent the rest of his life regretting it... Or maybe not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Koujaku Keeps Getting Surprised

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I should mention I have no idea how this site works. But this being one of the few times posting on FFNET wouldn't make any sense, here I am. Let's pray to whomever that I don't screw something up.  
> By the way, English is not my first language, so do excuse any possible mistakes. Pointing them out is always helpful, though.

Looking back on it now, he probably shouldn't have been so surprised. 

After all, the brat's appearances at Aoba's house haven't been such rare occurrences lately, and after several yelling rampages, even Tae became somewhat accepting of his behavior, with a few well-pointed glares here and there. Still, when Aoba called him earlier that night, saying he wanted to go out and hang around, he hadn't mentioned anything about a third party joining.

Aoba lets him in, smiling, and takes him to the living room, where the brat is sitting cross legged on the couch with his holograms all around him, and Koujaku's jaw decides to make itself acquainted with the Seragaki residence's carpet, before he apologizes and leaves the room to get his shoes and a jacket.

Noiz's eyes are flashing over the monitors, the 0.1 milliseconds long glance they give Koujaku during the process of flicking between the left and the front one the only acknowledgment of his existence, and Koujaku, for one, finds himself at a loss of things to do. It is natural, though, because a) he never interacts with Noiz if they aren't shouting at/fighting each other, ending in the fact that b) if Noiz isn't already shouting at/fighting him, and is silently calling it a truce, there isn't much point in them interacting anyway.

The end result is a few particularly long moments of awkward silence on Koujaku's side, and another few finger taps on Noiz's before he finally looks up and gives Koujaku a decidedly unimpressed look.

One corner of his mouth twitches slightly. "Won't you sit down, old man? Don't your ancient bones get tired if you stand for too long?"

The thing is, Koujaku likes to at least think that he is more mature than that. In his twenty-something years, he should've gotten used to jabs and learned not to respond to them. He should know better. If he is already the old man here, he should be the voice of common sense. 

"Says the brat acting like it owns the goddamn house."

And on the other hand, he has no idea what this guy's deal is. He is irritating, yes, by what to seems to be natural talent, but, for some reason, Koujaku has the feeling that the brat worked to perfect the technique of annoying people. He doesn't know him well enough to know why, he doesn't care enough to try and find out and he knows from his own experience that people have scars they don't want others to know about. 

“I'm not the one always inviting myself over.” Noiz's fingers are gliding over the keyboard lightly, and Koujaku allows himself to be bewildered by the extent of the research the brat must've done to access that information for a moment before blasting, “At least I have a good reason to be doing that! What is your agenda, you tired to kill him once and now you're having tea parties together?”

Sometimes he gets the urge to pry out of pure curiosity, but he restrains himself before he does something he will regret. Sometimes, though, it is hard, especially considering what someone as expressionless as Noiz _must_ be hiding, and the more prominent question of _why_. It's not as if he had a lot of opportunities to observe it, but from what he's seen, the only enjoyment the brat gets from things is riling people up and not giving them the chance to pay it back. 

Twitching becomes a ghost of a smirk, although Noiz otherwise seems pretty bored, and Koujaku can easily tell that his brain is investing far more of its attention into whatever is going on on those screens than in the conversation they are having. “Touchy as soon as someone else approaches your boyfriend? You will have to get couple counseling if you go on like that, old man.”

And Koujaku doesn't know is it just that he isn't as mature as he believes or is he jealous or protective or does he actually care on some unrealized level. But he snaps back, and he argues, and he isn't even sure is he providing the brat with its only form of entertainment because he feels sorry for it or does that thought horrify him even more and is that horrification because he generally minds the notion of possibly helping it or just a result of not wanting to admit he's doing something good for it and is not wanting to admit it because he doesn't like him or for another reason entirely. 

“Aoba's not - “

“Besides, tea parties might be your thing, but I think I would rather pass.”

“He's not my - “

“No? What, you haven't confessed yet or something?”

“It's not like - “

“So you're still in denial?”

Koujaku puts his fingers on his temples and sits down. Right. Okay. He can do this. 

“Brat. I would very much appreciate if you would get it through your thick and empty skull that I am, in fact, not even gay, and even less romantically interested in my best friend, because in the case of failure, my ever-growing urge to kick you will reach its full potential and summon Tae-san, and it is better for both of us if that doesn't happen.

Noiz blinks at him. “Wow, old man. I remain infinitely stunned at your vocabulary range.”

Koujaku heaves, trying very, very hard not to rip the bloody thing's throat out. 

And then Noiz, miraculously, shuts up.

… For ten seconds.

“What is taking your boyfriend so long? If he's waiting for you to jerk him off in the hallway or something, just go and do it already.”

Koujaku gets up. 

“I'm back! Sorry for the wait!”

What Aoba finds upon walking in is Koujaku standing in the middle of the room, halfway to the sofa, clenching his fists, red in the face, breathing so loudly that he sounds like a dying walrus, and Noiz with one leg off the couch while the other one is still folded underneath him, his butt hovering in the air, about twenty centimeters above the seat. 

He examines the view calmly, inspecting both of the participants, before sighing rather tiredly. “So. What is it this time?”

 

It is Koujaku who insists it's, “Nothing!”, yelling it out for the whole world to hear, after he and Noiz turn to their respective corners of the room and before he basically drags them both out of the house. They say their goodbyes to Tae, who just eyes them suspiciously, murmurs something to herself and slams the door in their faces. 

They get themselves on the road and proceed to walk awkwardly and in silence for some time, and Koujaku feels really numb, so it takes him long enough to realize that he doesn't even know where they are going. He turns to Aoba dumbly to ask him and Aoba laughs nervously and says, “I thought we could just go to a bar or something? There is one two streets from here.” Koujaku just nods and stares into the distance, soon hearing his friend starting to converse with the brat. He shuts it out, silently counting his pros and cons. Pro, there is alcohol at the bar. Pro, that gives him a source of entertainment if all else fails. Pro, that makes it easier to bare with a specific individual. Con? Koujaku was lying when talking to Noiz – he was, in reality, very much interested in the same sex. Or he would've been, if that thought didn't terrify him. 

Thinking about it, he could probably blame Aoba for everything. Because Aoba just had to be such a cute kid and look like a girl, with his long hair and big eyes and everything. Koujaku, in fact, believed, in the rare times in which he would allow himself to think about stuff like that, that it had been that exact same thing that led him to liking guys – his mind connecting the image of someone who was a boy, but looked like a girl, and whom Koujaku might have developed the tiniest crush on, with girls, whom he was expected to like. And he did – Koujaku might've started sleeping around partially to cover up for his – erm – gayness, but that didn't mean he hasn't enjoyed encounters he had with women. 

Still, as the object of his biggest affections was someone who considered him his best friend, Koujaku bottled everything up. He was just a child when it all started, and he didn't really know what he was supposed to do with what he felt, and then later became paranoid about someone finding out. As his reputation as a ladies man and a Rib leader grew, he got more and more frightened by it, until he eventually just bagged it all in some deep, faraway corner of his mind and refused to acknowledge it at all. 

However, Koujaku's defense had one weakness – it was completely useless under the influence of alcohol. 

By the time Koujaku finishes debating all of this with himself, they are already at their destination and Aoba is pushing him inside. They walk in and go for the bar stools, Koujaku and Noiz determinedly taking their seats on either side of Aoba, who apparently notices this, because he looks at them and sighs again. Koujaku settles his forearms on the bar-top, leans on them and looks to his right, where a pair of green eyes is staring at him blankly, and then sends everything to hell and orders himself a drink. When he gets one, he chugs it down in one go. Aoba raises an eyebrow at him, but Koujaku ignores him and asks the bartender for another one. 

Time passes, Koujaku drinks and Aoba switches between conversing with him and conversing with Noiz, growing increasingly irritated when either refuses to cooperate. Koujaku feels bad for him, and guilt claws at the inside of his stomach more than it usually does (because Aoba just wanted them all to have a good time, and this certainly wasn't what he had in mind by today's night out), so he gets more alcohol to drown it, because there is no way in whole fucking hell that he is talking to that creature if he isn't physically forced to. He manages to finish another three glasses of whatever it is that the guy behind the bar keeps passing him (he just asked for “something strong”), throwing him weird glances along the way, before Aoba's Coil rings. 

He answers it, leads a short, seemingly upsetting conversation, and then vaguely says that someone (Koujaku's brain is already turning into a mush at this point) is in some sort of trouble that he needs to tend to right away. 

Koujaku jumps to his feet, jerking slightly when alcohol slaps him in the face with the united force of a dissatisfied customer and a disappointed lover (not that Koujaku had much experience with either, but hey), and asks Aoba to let him come, at which he goes to assure him that it is nothing serious and that he will be back in a minute. Noiz doesn't say anything – Aoba leaves. 

But really, he probably shouldn't have been so surprised at that either. 

Koujaku sits down and looks at his folded hands. The bar is bustling around them, people chatting and laughing and being drunk and fighting and making out and what not, but the patch of air between them is icy. There is, after all, nothing comfortable with sitting half-drunk in a bar with your only company being someone you consider a candidate for the spot of the most annoying person ever, even more so now that the word exchange died down. 

Praying that Aoba is really going to be back soon, Koujaku waves his hand for the bartender. This is going to be a long evening. 

 

An undetermined amount of time later, Koujaku is hammered. And no, he isn't just sorta hammered, he is very properly, can't-even-see-where-I'm-going, will-be-extremely-hungover-in-the-morning hammered. He has, as everyone does at some point on the way to hammeredness, lost count of how many drinks he drank, but he is almost positive the brat kept count just so it could make fun of him for it later. 

He doesn't really remember how he got out of the bar, or why, for that matter, but he is currently walking down the road which he honestly hopes leads back to his house. Somewhere in his alcohol-hazed mind the information that Aoba never did get back rings in an alarming tone, but he concludes that he is either too drunk to properly process it or too drunk to care. And that means that... wow. Koujaku stops in the middle of the street. That means he must be _pretty_ drunk. 

As he is already standing still, though, and not so much of his conscious attention has to be invested in trying not to fall, he kinda starts noticing something is off. He frowns. He still has his clothes on, as far as he can see, so that's not it, and he even thinks he recognizes that fruit shop at the corner, so he can't be that lost either. But Koujaku's senses are pretty accurate, intoxicated or not, so after he gathers enough sensibility to look around, he finally discovers the source of his uncomfortableness. And that is the fact that, for some incomprehensible reason, Noiz is standing no more than seven steps in front of him. 

Oh.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” 

Noiz gives him a look Koujaku figures is meant to show him what an insufferable old man he is and convey a feeling of deep annoyance at the same time. He rolls his eyes to emphasize the point, effectively getting it across. “Watching you don't fall into a ditch or something, apparently.”

And then Koujaku spits, “I don't need help from a brat like you”, because it is a reflex not even his current state can counter, before he can even start wondering why is Noiz actually watching he doesn't fall into a ditch (although an utterance that he should probably be grateful for that does briefly flash in his head, given that outcome is becoming likelier with every passing second).

“Then we're on the same page, old man, because I sure as hell don't want to be helping you either.” At which point Koujaku's memories of exiting the bar suddenly become much clearer, and he remembers the halfway cute bartender (bloody fuck, he is realizing how drunk he is more and more each moment) looking significantly at his almost passed out form sprawled on the bar-top and then staring worriedly at Noiz, most likely assuming they were there together (which they kind of were, he supposes, if you don't count Aoba; shit, where is Aoba, anyway?), who was ignoring the balls out of him until Koujaku went from being sprawled on the bar-top to slipping from the bar-top to the floor, where he would've inevitably ended if the halfway cute bartender (he was pretty sure not even his sorta-drunk self would be capable of proclaiming a guy halfway-cure) hadn't caught him on time, which Noiz undeniably found amusing, seeing how the event dragged an entertained smirk out of him, but it also meant he couldn't pretend he wasn't seeing either one of them anymore. And then the halfway cute bartender was telling Noit that his “friend” (which Koujaku certainly is not) was very drunk (which Koujaku certainly was) and that he should really be taken home and rest now (which was true), preferably by Noiz (which wasn't preferable at all), and Noiz was somehow being okay with it, which might've been because the guy was very persistent (and Koujaku would've probably been much more appreciative of someone halfway cute being so worried about him if he wasn't so drunk, if his not-so-drunk self could even admit the guy was halfway cute), and then Noiz was sighing and paying the bill and getting one of Koujaku's arms over his shoulders and taking him out through the back door so the other customers wouldn't have to see him, and Koujaku grasped what was happening and did his best to get his arm off of Noiz, although he did stumble pretty badly while doing that, and fuck, Koujaku is really drunk and he is starting to think that Noiz is actually-kinda-sorta-maybe-possibly nice and then there is an irritated sigh and a, “Look, I realize old people might need to take breaks once in a while, but I don't have the whole damn night, so I need to know are you planning on staying there forever”, and Koujaku realizes they are still standing in the middle of the street. 

And then he finds himself so miraculously stunned that he doesn't even bring to consciousness the obvious obligation to make a comeback, but just starts walking. That, however, leads to two good things. One, the brat seems equally surprised by his course of action, which shows on its face for the shortest moment and makes Koujaku happy, and then twice as unhappy when he gathers what he is being happy for (so maybe that isn't a good thing after all). Two (or one), this makes Noiz have to quicken his steps to catch up with him, and then, as if proving something, outpace him, and Koujaku notices he has a nice ass, and then cringes both outwardly and inwardly because of the same reason (so maybe that isn't a good thing either). 

Anyhow, there is some sort of silence then, and Koujaku makes use of the fact by starting to chant an internal mantra of, “Damn it damn it damn it”. He tries to keep his eyes on the road, but what surprises him most is how indifferent he is to the whole thing. He can't even force himself to be bothered by the fact he just had a Gay Moment, or over the identity of the person he had it for. He reasons that he still has eyes, after all, that he is drunk and probably too gone to care anymore. 

He lifts his gaze a bit, carefully inspecting the back of the brat's head, and his earlier conclusion springs to his mind. He never gave it much thought before, but looking at him now, it seems unbelievably easy to believe he has some amount of good qualities. Under all stony expressions and icy glares and insults he throws around and the carelessness he oozes... 

Koujaku is suddenly disgusted with himself. Since when was he so superficial? Since when could people not be nice because of having walls around them? Since when did he know anything about the bloody brat that sufficed for him to judge it fairly? 

Realization hits him like a brick, and has a, “Whoa, wait”, go through his head. What is he even thinking about? _The truth_ , whispers a voice inside him, but Koujaku buries it down as quickly as possible, cursing himself for his cowardice in the process. A part of him knows he is just scared of perceiving the brat as a human, but Koujaku has become very good at avoiding musings he didn't want to have over the years. Why this one scares him so much, though, he doesn't know. 

He almost forgets he still exists in time and space, but he stopped again and Noiz clearly isn't appreciative of this. He rolls his eyes once more and says, “This is pathetic, old man. You didn't even have that much to drink.”

Koujaku tries to produce something that's similar enough to a snort. “Look who's talking. Are you even old enough to buy yourself some alcohol, brat?” He is flabbergasted by the fact that he wants to smile because this is okay. This is normal. It's just them getting at each other's throats. 

Noiz turns around and starts walking, either pretending to ignore him or pretending he doesn't hear him, which he may think looks like he doesn't care enough to answer, but it basically gives Koujaku the answer anyway. He was only half-joking when he suggested it, so he is also only a bit astonished by his discovery. Besides, natural human interest piques in, along with his previous mixed thoughts, so this seems like too good of an opportunity to miss. Then he also catches on the potential teasing material, and his face acquires something akin to an evil grin. 

He practically has to run to catch up (a terrible idea, if his growing headache is anything to go by), but he prays for it to be worth it. “Well, who would've said so? So, what is it, are you just a few months away or even younger?”

No response. “What, you don't want me to know? That's understandable. After all, you are just a brat, despite that tough look you try to put on.”

Still nothing. “In the end, if I'm the old man, aren't you just a kid playing an adult? And if I am pathetic, as you oh-so-often say, aren't you even more pathetic?” Noiz's lips part, as if he almost let a remark slip out, but he keeps silent. So he does have weak spots, Koujaku thinks. However, he is starting to feel dizzy again, as if the alcohol's influence has returned once again, after seemingly leaving him for a while. He is almost thankful for it, because gods know he has been sensible for too long now, and the night has gotten impossibly strange during that time. 

“Don't you know it's rude to ignore your seniors?” One of the drawbacks, however, is that maybe he isn't in control of his emotions as much as he would like to be, and that they certainly come much more intense than what would be sufficient, so now he is starting to get pissed. Granted, he actually already is, but in a different sense of the word. 

“Seriously, are you even supposed to be out this late? Won't your parents get worried?” he mocks. 

There. He finds it. Brat's face falls for the slightest bit, and Koujaku is just about to pressure him some more so he would burst, but then Noiz stops and says, “Is this not your house?”

And it is his house, although Koujaku would've admittedly completely missed it lest for the brat pointing it out. And really, thinking about it, he should've just taken the opportunity when it was offering itself to him. He could've ignored the unexplainable anger – actually, no, fuck that, this is fucking rage - that overtakes him right then, entered his goddamn house, and slept through the hangover. The chance for a calm life was lying before him. But no. Of course it couldn't have been that easy. Of course Koujaku had to be an idiot. 

He isn't sure to this day is it actually the alcohol he has to blame, or the... what, heat of the moment? 

But anyhow, what happens is that Koujaku does the most unpredictably predictable thing. He grabs the shitty brat by the collar and studies its face for a moment. He tries to see is it surprised or irritated or craving a pineapple for all he cares, or _something_. He is greeted by a mask of blank ignorance. So he snarls. And kisses it. Because for some unknown reason, _that_ seems like a sensible thing to do. He remembers pushing a, “You are so fucking annoying”, somewhere between teeth, the most surprising sensation of the brat kissing back, and him fumbling to open the door he has it against. 

And then everything, as it always does, goes black. Although he probably shouldn't have been so surprised at that either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not exactly sure how can you see is someone craving a pinapple by looking at their face, but eh. He was drunk. And geez is it weird to write curses when you don't curse.  
> Also, if somebody actually likes this, I would like to apologize in advance if I don't update in, like, three months, because school. But I was already writing the first chapter for three months, became sick and tired of waiting, so I guess now I'm testing the terrain?


	2. In Which Koujaku is a Mess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This... took a surprisingly lesser amount of time than I expected. But I do suppose walking around my room and psychoanalyzing a fictional character is more amusing than homework. 
> 
> Also, I would like to apologize in advance, because I'm not sure how many things I did in this chapter come across as intentional, but I swear I was trying to be true to the chapter's title and that I'm not that bad of a writer to think sentences of this length and with the present amount of "and"s in them are acceptable.

If he is being completely honest with himself, there are several things in his life he isn't so sure about, as in unsure if they should've happened, unsure if they did happen and unsure if he reacted to them the way he was supposed to react, unsure of some of his beliefs and actions and his overall functionality as a human being sometimes, usually when flashbacks surface and he wonders why is he even alive to start with. 

And if he is being even more honest with himself, there are _more_ than several such things, examples including most of his childhood (for instance that one time when he and Aoba were still brats (why did he just flinch?) and saw a few guys playing some very shirtless football, and he ended up staring for about twelve seconds longer than it was absolutely necessary), as well things such as him getting so smashed at Mizuki's birthday party once that he woke up in an unknown bed with four women (not so sure that fourth one was a woman, but for the sake of his pride and sanity he sticks to the first version of the story) and no memory of how he got there, so he just gathered his clothes and escaped as fast as he could, making the grave mistake of telling Mizuki about it later, because after the bastard finished laughing at him and promised not to tease him about it _too_ much, the incident would come up much more often than Koujaku would've liked, usually when Mizuki wanted to embarrass him in front of a crowd, with reactions to it ranging from bewilderment to impressed pats on his back, leaving him to muster enough decency to blush and laugh it off. 

And then there is right now, and even if he is really unsure about the reason for him being so bloody cold and his location and why does that memory of Mizuki's birthday party feel strangely déjà vu-ish and what did he _do_ last night, because even aside from the heavy metal band that apparently decided to make itself at home in his head and is presumably having a rehearsal right now, his body is an anvil and there is a disgusting taste in his mouth and fuck, even beside all that, if there is one thing he is absolutely fucking positive about right now, it is that he doesn't want to open his eyes. Ever. Fucking. Again. 

But seriously, did he leave a window open, because why is it so fudging cold? 

And then Koujaku, contradicting everything he believes in at the moment, actually opens his eyes and realizes that the why behind the cold is the fact that he has no clothes on. 

And that's when everything comes rushing back. 

 

First comes the shock. 

He very unwisely sits up in his bed, with an abruptness that causes a cacophony of pain so great that it doesn't even matter where it started, because it hurts _everywhere_. He opens his mouth to swear, but his vocal cords are refusing to work, so he just impersonates a goldfish until his mind finishes being unable to process the information that he made out with the most annoying person in the world and woke up naked the next morning, and when that clicks... well.

Then comes the panic.

“FUCK!”

With his brain now free enough to devote some of its attention to his speaking system, his previous intention gets realized in the form of every swear word he knows pouring out of his mouth, and while that might've lost its significance in the context of this morning, it says something, because Koujaku doesn't really swear much, partly because he is a refined gentleman, partly because he doesn't often have the need to, and partly because he doesn't want to give a bad example to Aoba. Exceptions are him being drunk, in the company of Noiz or very upset, and he was in one or more of those states during the entirety of yesterday evening and today.

He manages to untangle himself from the sheets, gets out of bed, starts running to the door, freezes midway, returns, puts a housecoat on, then runs to the door again. He gets quiet as he enters the hallway, because if his first instinct is determining is the brat still in his house, he can at least try not to scare it. He starts navigating the place as silently as possible in the given situation (aka not silent at all), firstly tapping from one corner to the other, which looks like a very convincing representation of a drunken dinosaur (aka what he currently resembles most) and makes him feel both ridiculous and like a burglar in his own house after a while (besides, why is he even doing this, Noiz is a human being, not a fucking squirell), so he stops with that and switches to the much safer method of walking. The first definition of what he's doing that springs to mind is “collecting data”, and that reminds him so much of one person he doesn't want to think about now that it is blatantly weird. But as brains are already inclined on making the most stupid connections when you least want them to, he writes this off as his still being too sensitive and fragile (as well as probably traumatized, seeing how it, as a brain, has everything Koujaku's conscious parts want to repress stored) to focus on anything else, and just swears again and moves along, and after some time he knows that, in addition to the bedroom, Noiz also isn't in the hallway, the bathroom, or on the porch. 

He tries listening before he enters anywhere, but there isn't a sound, excluding his own breathing and some birds in the sakura tree in front of his window, and when he finally blasts into the living room connecting to the kitchen, his hearth thundering unhealthily intensely, he is sure (how ironic) that there is no one in his home but his miserable self. 

He slides down the nearest wall and crouches, pulling a very convincing anime form of depression, complete with arms folded on top of his knees and his head buried in them. He realizes his hair is undone when it spills across his face and he watches the ends that drag lazily across the floor and can't bring himself to feel scandalized over either of those things, because his hairdresser's pride is not something he has the capacity to worry about right now, which tells him more than anything that this is _bad_. 

It is in that position, however, that his thoughts finally clear to some degree and he restores a part of his ability to reason logically, and that is how a suspicion comes to be, growing from shapeless, over the quite some grounds he has, to the inference that he might actually be completely and utterly wrong. 

You see, when Koujaku thinks about the moment “everything” went black, he means that _absolutely_ everything went black, and the “everything” that rushed back is basically everything until and including him sticking his tongue in the brat's mouth and fumbling for keys. 

With what is maybe just a stupidly naïve hope stuck in his chest, he tries to recreate the evening chronologically. He went to Aoba's place, he and Noiz had some sort of a shouting match that didn't have the time to escalate, they went to a bar, he got drunk (he winces while remembering that – partly because of the consequences that maybe had, partly because his whole body still very much fucking hurts), Aoba left, Noiz got him out – 

Koujaku's head snaps upward with such force that one of the many thoughts that goes through it during the impact is that he must've fractured either it, the wall, or both. More curses flow from his mouth while his hands go up to massage the even more painful spot now, but fuck, Aoba left that fucking bar and he never fucking came back. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Fucking shit. Shitting fuck. He jumps to his feet. Goddammit, what is he supposed to do now? 

Various body parts moving in different directions, thoughts incoherent, and somewhere between the jumbled nerve endings, his title as a Rib leader swims to the front and slaps him on the forehead with such effectiveness that shame momentarily overcomes everything else. 

A Rib leader. 

He is a Rib leader. 

A quality of a good Rib leader is that he rules the situation. 

Koujaku gathers his wits and tries to think straight (he winces again at that – why his mind is making so many implications this morning is beyond him). To sum it up, he has two major issues right now. First one is discovering what exactly happened last night and deciding what to do about it, and the second determining Aoba's whereabouts and physical and mental health. Koujaku knows which one he would rather devote himself to firstly and which one is more urgent, and as both of those things happen to equal the second problem, he soon starts searching his wrist for his Coil. He finds nothing but scars and ink, so he frowns at the bare skin and ventures back to his bedroom. He searches around for a while, because it is not on the window ledge or the dresser or any visible surface as far as he can tell. He comes across various items of clothing, all his own, scattered around, which is something that definitely doesn't fix his mood or the uneasy feeling that hasn't been leaving him for gods know how long now. He finally finds it underneath his bed and attaches it back, his worry coming back in sudden waves, so he frantically taps the buttons and after he presses the call option for Aoba's contact, each shitty ring seems like heavy church bells reciting how much time he has left to live, the outcome when his request gets answered being him feeling so relieved that he can only sit on silence for a few moments while Aoba is saying, “Koujaku? Koujaku? Hey, you there?”

“Aoba”, he gets out, his voice raspy. He realizes these are the first words he's said out loud since last night, and that all the alcohol has certainly managed to do some damage to his throat. He clears it and says, “Yeah, I'm here. Are you... are you okay? Are you home?”

“Yes, of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be?” and he could swear he hears Aoba frowning. 

“No reason. Say, can I stop by your house later?”

“Um, sure. Is everything alright?”

Absolutely nothing is alright, but Koujaku can't very well say that without any explanation or making his friend worry unnecessarily, although he is also responsible, thank you very much. 

“Yeah. I'll be there... “ he pauses to look at the clock, and jumps when he figures out it is almost noon, before continuing with “... in about an hour and a half?”

“Okay, see you then.”

“Bye.”

And then he is left with his Coil bleeping at him. He sits in silence for a minute before turning it off and putting it on the ledge, his hand reaching for the pack of cigarettes he holds there. He lights one and takes a long drag. Koujaku doesn't really smoke much either, partly because he isn't that much of a refined gentleman, partly because he doesn't often have the need to, and partly because he doesn't want to give a bad example to Aoba. He does it either when he is extremely calm or extremely agitated, but there have been numerous occasions when one of those emotions turned into the other at the end of the small burning stick, so when Koujaku is done inhaling and exhaling and just being and there is nothing to hold between his fingers anymore, he feels empty, like all the frustration has left him along with last wisps of smoke, and when he puts it out and leaves the cigarette butt in the ashtray to go to the bathroom, his head is clear for the first time in a long while. 

He examines himself in the mirror, wanting to determine how much damage has been done, but there are, thankfully, no traces of his escapades except his mussed hair and the look of a dead man on his face. 

He showers and washes, brushes and dries his hair before tying it in its usual ponytail and securing his mother's hairpin in, then putting on clean bandages and dressing. He throws all of the yesterday's clothes on the wash pile, though he isn't really sure does he want to see them ever again, so the thought of burning them altogether occupies his mind for a moment too long before he comes to his senses. 

He finds his keys on the cupboard next to the door, and suddenly a picture of him tossing them there while stumbling inside appears in his head. 

He petrifies with his hand on the doorknob. No. _No_. He promised himself he wouldn't – he could not – he was – 

But it is hard to suppress the memory once it starts to leak out, and he has to close his eyes and put his head on the wood of the door to stop the images from flashing in his head; him pulling the brat's beanie off and putting his hand on his neck to pull him in – and, thank gods, nothing else.

He is, of course, completely aware of the fact that he is just avoiding to remember, but he is also on a quest, going toward the resolution of the Second Big Issue, and that is what he tells himself while exiting and locking the door behind him. He has to finish this – he will have all the time in the world to worry over everything else later. 

He pleads the skies that he doesn't meet anybody he knows along the way, both because he is in a hurry and because he thinks he might throw a tantrum like a goddamn two year old (Koujaku's ego can only take so much damage, and it is already pretty truncated) if someone tries to talk to him. The skies must be feeling generous, though, because all the people he crosses paths with are never more than acquaintances, and none of them do anything but wave or smile. Koujaku returns the greetings the best he can, but he doesn't know how many of them he managed to convince he is not constipated. 

He isn't sure why is he so anxious. After all, he heard Aoba talk on the phone, in his undeniably Aoba tone and way, but something that migh as well be the remains of distress from long, long ago tells him all that doesn't matter in the slightest until he physically sees him and confirms he is alright. 

He doesn't remember which route he used to get to the Seragaki house, but he is now there and ringing the bell furiously. When Tae lets him in, he barely stops for long enough to greet her, ask about her health and let her grumble her answers before racing up the stairs. 

Aoba is lying on his bed with headphones on, and doesn't hear him come in or see him at first, so Koujaku is left to stand in the doorway, chest heaving, relishing in his friend's well-being. And just for a moment, that short moment before Aoba opens his eyes and spots him and offers him a smile, while that peaceful look is still on his face, along with the overall contentedness and eyelashes on his cheekbones, Koujaku allows himself to not feel surprised, because now and in other moments such as that one, everything that previously happened makes perfect sense. 

 

He ends up staying at Aoba's house all day. Opening business isn't an option anyway, although it is Saturday, which is generally his busiest day, the one after the work week and before the one when you prepare for a new one, but Koujaku is way too stressed out to even let himself close to a brush and a pair of scissors. He doesn't quite manage to get what is the problem Aoba had to deal with yesterday out of him, but when he asks, Aoba grimaces, says it was some sort of a false alarm and proceeds to apologize. Koujaku stares at him for a few moments, but then Aoba just laughs it off and tells him, “Seriously, don't worry about it.” Koujaku isn't satisfied with that, but Aoba isn't spilling, and while he doesn't believe it is something serious, he makes a mental note to talk to whomever else was involved with this as soon as possible and squeeze it out of them. The conversation makes a turn then somehow, and not so long after they are talking about some other completely unconnected thing, and then Tae is calling them down for lunch and he gets seated on her right side and is talking to both her and Aoba, before he is dragged upstairs once again and it is suddenly evening and he is at his usual spot at the veranda, with a cigarette in his hand, looking at the buildings around him and the closed street, but this time, he is smoking for an altogether different reason. 

Aoba is inside, playing with Ren, and there is just so much peace around him that he can almost ignore the nagging voice telling him he is just putting off the confrontation with the First Big Issue. 

Somebody knocks on the door, somebody Koujaku assumes, without turning around, is Tae coming up to tell Aoba to do some chore because he doesn't hear her half the time, a courtesy of his headphones. 

And then Aoba opens the door and says, ”Oh, hey, Noiz”, before letting the First Big Issue personified in, and Koujaku drops the cigarette from his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't get your hopes up, I have very little assurance that Chapter 3 will be out as fast as this one was. 
> 
> Thank you to all the people who left kudos and/or subscribed and/or bookmarked, but I'm gonna be a shitty person and say that uh, guys, I still have no idea what I'm doing, and I would appreciate if you would at least tell me what I'm doing _wrong_. So, a comment going, "This is trash", would be as good as any, although I'll have nothing against you if you say something nice.


	3. In Which Koujaku Overthinks a Lot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... don't look at me like that, I did warn you that this might happen. And it wasn't exactly three months, which only adds to me being sorry, because this is not only shorter than both previous chapters (the difference between the second and the third is some 300 words, but still), but we also spend like half of it inside Koujaku's head. Again. 
> 
> This will probably be stylistically edited in the future, as well as Chapter 2, 'cause something currently unidentified is bothering me about it. Feel free to throw suggestions my way. 
> 
> So, in abundance of Friday night KouNoi fics, I hope you find a minute or two for this.

Noiz strolls in casually, and maybe that's the first thing that pisses him off. 

It is, of course, highly likely that last night's nonexistent memories are making him forget that Noiz basically reeks of confidence, but the completely inappropriate ease and the undoubtedly calm expression with which he walks in make Koujaku develop a need to punch the brat's lungs out. 

The second thing comes in the form of the brat's eyes examining the room with the familiarity of a pair that has done that a million times before, which is not something that particular pair has, in fact, done, and yes, maybe Koujaku is jealous, but that is beside the point. The point appears with the third thing, when Noiz's gaze drifts over the veranda's open doors and Koujaku behind those doors leisurely, like he isn't surprised to see Koujaku there at all, like he _expected_ to see him there, because that is when Koujaku knows that whatever excuse for his presence Noiz intends to give Aoba is going to be fake. 

There isn't a quirk of lips, a glint of amusement, or even recognition, but there is something – _something_ – in the way he comes in, almost looking like he is searching for a specific occurrence, before he pinpoints it (“it” being Koujaku himself), and he just _knows_. 

And if he counts that as four, then really, he thinks, that is a decent enough of an amount to justify snapping. 

His face acquires an angry cover on its own accord, and he strides over the threshold, mouth opening without him knowing what is going to come out of them (does he want to shun him for being so arrogant, yell at him, ask him about... well, everything?), before Noiz turns to Aoba, who is looking at him half-happy, half-confused, and Koujaku gets ignored entirely.

Make that five. 

He doesn't get an invitation to join the conversation, so he doesn't make an effort to include himself either. Instead, he goes back to the balcony and stomps on his cigarette with enough force to knock an elephant out, folds his arms across his chest and waits. He tells himself it is out of spite or what he is even ready to admit is fear, but it is later that he realizes he was apparently impersonating a three-year-old child that didn't get what it wanted, so is now fuming on the side like a mass-production factory's chimney in hopes of getting its parents to cave in. 

Goddammit, he isn't supposed to be the brat here. 

 

Noiz apologizes for barging in unannounced with such a straight face that Koujaku has a hard time believing he meant one word of it, but that gets pushed behind by the discovery that he is able to utter those words in a non-sarcastic manner. _Huh. Interesting._

Anyhow, Noiz seems to be missing one of his rabbit cube Allmate thingies, and he couldn't have possibly left it here yesterday, could he?

Koujaku huddles wisps of breath to snort, but before he has a chance to do so, Tae interrupts him by shouting that dinner is on the table. Aoba brightens immediately and ushers them both downstairs, ignoring Koujaku's pitiful attempts at evading that course of action and assuring Noiz that they are going to look for the cube after they eat, so Koujaku inescapably ends up suffering through an entire meal with the brat. 

… which continues to ignore him.

_Six._

And while one might've thought he'd have learned by now that these things always backfire, he chooses to glare at Noiz anyway, making it entirely his own fault when he looks back. 

He tries to choke on his food seamlessly as possible, managing to both avoid Aoba noticing and miss the brat's smirk. 

He doesn't stick around for the anyway pointless cube pursuit, but rather makes up having an early day tomorrow, apologizes to Aoba and Tae politely and leaves before anyone can react. 

He stumbles to his house like a sleepwalker, smiling his constipated smile to anyone who isn't too invested in their better or worse half and better or worse causes to greet him, and when he finally gets to the safety of his home and closes the door to his bedroom, he knows it is a fake excuse for sure, because he is currently sitting on his bed and holding the goddamn cube in his hands. 

As he twists it between his fingers, a thought he hasn't yet had the time to entertain swims to the front, and for the first time he finds it odd that yesterday, Noiz knew which house was his. They certainly aren't close enough to share addresses, and he doesn't think Aoba told him, but Koujaku isn't stupid enough to think that a computers obsessed Rhymer that quite literally lives from selling information _doesn't_ have resources everywhere. 

And that kinda begs the question of how much he knows, because it is not even about how good Koujaku is at burying things, it's about how deep the brat is ready to dig. 

Which would also explain why Noiz acts like he has him completely figured out. (The thought makes him grits his teeth momentarily.)

He sighs deeply before letting his upper body flop onto the mattress too. His arms fall on either side of him, completely spread, and the cube rolls from his open right palm and and into a dip that he isn't even sure his own body left. He feels noticeably better now than he did this morning, because while there is still the somewhat acid-like feeling in his gut, at least he now feels like he can move around without puking out everything he had consumed during the past week, and the banging in his head has been reduced to a minimum. He should sleep, as that would be a one-way ticket to full recovery, but here he is, playing with some dumb cube and slicing his nerves thinking about what by every reasonable rule in the universe should've been someone that didn't matter to him in any sense of the word. 

He rolls onto his side and lets his body function just enough for him to breathe and stare at the smiling cube in a competition he knows he can't win, but it doesn't feel fair to quit without even trying. The colors and sounds – birds, distant hum of cars and people talking coming through the window (he opened one earlier for the sake of not suffocating in his thoughts) – drain from his surroundings. 

He is confused. He is really damn confused. He doesn't know what he is doing nor what he is feeling, and there is this mass of emotion pressuring his internal organs and squeezing all his brain juices out. 

He sighs again and shuts his eyes, effectively losing the contest, but he doesn't care. He has been stuck in the same proverbial loop since this morning, chasing loose ends and petty clues, naturally getting nowhere, and he definitely, _definitely_ doesn't like feeling this clueless. So if he wants something he can act upon, he needs to try and separate threads of a hank. 

The first thing that comes up is anger. Anger at whomever did whatever it was that made Aoba leave, at Aoba, for actually leaving the two of them alone, at himself, which is everburning and getting incineration material from many different sources, but if he has to pick one right now, it would be for letting his defenses down, for succumbing to temptation. There is anger at the brat too, of course, but, surprisingly, he can't exactly specify the reason, because... Koujaku is the one who started it. Koujaku is the one who got drunk, Koujaku is the one who acted against his better judgment and Koujaku is the one fretting over it right now. Noiz has seen him to his house, Noiz was the one attacked, Noiz is _underage_. 

Koujaku groans into his sheets. Oh gods, he _is_ underage. 

_And yet he still went with it_ , whispers a small part of him. It whispers it insistently. It whispers it until it's not small anymore. 

Logically speaking, he has seen Noiz today, and he seemed fine. Hell, he seemed more than fine, he seemed _smug_ , and maybe that's what has Koujaku so baffled, because he expected something to happen. Maybe for Noiz to tease him, to tell him what a pathetic old man he is, to get mad, to fight him. He was prepared for adjudgment and rage, not for indifference, for Noiz barely recognizing his being, for him walking into Aoba's house clearly knowing Koujaku will be there. It feels as if he is just silently rubbing it in, and the worst part is that Koujaku doesn't know what he _wants_ Noiz to do. He can't determine a better or worse case scenario from what happened, and that is scary. 

Maybe the brat does have him figured out after all. 

And he can't let that sit. 

It will be a chase from now on. It has been a chase ever since Koujaku ran to his bathroom and rummaged through the pile of dirty clothes he left there to pull the pseudo rabbit from the pocket of his kimono. 

He opens his eyes again and gives the cube a nasty look. 

Two can play this game. 

 

Three days, and Koujaku feels like he is losing spectacularly. 

He goes around his business with Benishigure as usual, and he opens up his shop here and there and somewhere else. He washes and cuts and combs and styles. He tries pouring his mind and soul into his work, melting between the strands. His customers praise his work even more than usual, and say that yet he seem so distracted. 

It has been three days. Only three days. 

He avoids Aoba, because Aoba would know something is wrong (Aoba already knows something is wrong, from those few calls during which Koujaku answers curtly to as many questions as Aoba can pile into the time it takes Koujaku to find a pretext to hang up), and guilt that it produces just accumulates on the mountain of everything that has been hovering over his head lately. 

Surely he can last more than three days. 

The cube rests on his nightstand now, mostly because whenever he tries to put it somewhere else, he gets a weird stinging sensation in his neck, like it is observing him from behind this chair or that piece of clothing. (He is not making any sense to himself either.) 

How much is seventy two hours, anyway?

He takes a woman home one evening. To keeps the sense of normalcy more than anything else, he supposes, to not cause any suspicion. The experience is far from unpleasant, but as he is with her and she is with him, other faces keep appearing in his head. It used to be just one face, in his moments of weakness, and although he knows the other one is there just because it has been bothering him so much lately, it is still unsettling. 

Three days appear to be a really long time. 

As he lays there afterward, with the warmth of another human next to him, he still can't remember. The memory plays up to a point and stops like a broken tape, at the moment he is pushing them to the bedroom. It is after the kissing scene in the hallway, when he is yanking that stupid tie and shirt off of him. 

He looks at his hands and he can't remember tangling them in the brat's hair. It's a habit, a weird habit, he knows that much, but Aoba happened, and his mother happened, and his profession happened, and now Koujaku runs his hands through the tresses and lets them wrap around his fingers every time. 

Three days are entirely too much. 

He can't remember the feeling of skin or the taste, like it is just a motion picture ready to fade, and sometimes almost convinces himself that it is something he made up, and maybe if he does that times enough, it will become a dream. (It equal parts scares him and delights him.) (Pseudo rabbit's silent disapproval converts him back to reality, although it doesn't help much with anything else.)

Sometimes, Koujaku worries he is going insane. 

Koujaku won't withstand another three days.

 

On the fourth day, Noiz shows up at his doorstep. 

It is post meridiem, not long since Koujaku has come back home, but the late afternoon sun is still lending its glow to the dusty sidewalks. The bell rings, the door opens, and Koujaku is mesmerized by the notion that he has the time to be grateful the brat at least didn't brake in while he was away. 

They just stand there for some time, unblinking. Noiz looks bored, and Koujaku stares at him like there is meaning of life glinting somewhere in his piercings. 

“Are we going to stay here for eternity, or are you going to invite me in?”

Any other day, he would have bursted. He would have slammed the door in his face. 

He steps aside without a word. 

Noiz walks down the hall and into the living room with the same knowing evident back at Aoba's, and Koujaku tries to suppress the unpleasant feeling it gives him. He plops down onto the sofa and looks at Koujaku somewhat expectantly, like he might break into a row of cartwheels any minute now, but when Koujaku keeps leaning on the wall and says nothing, he raises an eyebrow and says, “So?”

Where was he with that list? Ah, yes. _Seven._

It is a chase, and Noiz is letting Koujaku make his moves while still making his first. He is dictating the course of the game, the route down which they are running. He left the cube here and showed up at Aoba's place to view his reaction, see what he will do, and now he came here and is doing the same thing. 

What Koujaku doesn't know is why. 

He looks Noiz up and down once, and then says, “What are you doing here?” His tone is nonchalant, his face calm – he plays it safe. As safe as he can, at least. 

The brat slants its head just slightly to the right, before it gets up again. It meets Koujaku's eyes and replies, “Usagimodoki is not at Aoba's house.” Koujaku's lips thin into a line. “It is not at mine either.” Noiz makes a step forward. “It's not even at the bar.” Another two steps. “There is only one more place I was at that day.” He is standing in front of Koujaku now. He is shorter than him, Koujaku notes. Makes sense he would be. It is like the universe is constantly sending him reminders of how young he is. How young is he, exactly? It occurs to him that he doesn't know. 

Noiz grins a little. “Come on.”

Koujaku hits him. 

Or he intends to, but Noiz clearly expects it and dodges. The smirk becomes more prominent. “Feeling better?”

Koujaku frowns. Is the brat _pitying_ him? 

His next punch lands. 

 

Somewhere on the sidelines, he is probably aware that he is being predictable, but at the time he doesn't care, because at the time there is only instinct and pain, and at the time he is relieved, even though he knows it won't last and will come back, only ten times worse, even though it's wrong. It didn't even necessarily have to be a fight, he muses. Just anything to push him out of the evergoing circle, anything to pull him out of the routine he feels he can't keep. 

But why? Why, why, _why_ did Noiz come, why did he tell him to do it, why did he help him? 

The mantra spins in his head with no apparent answer, and later, when their breathing is shallow and purple is blossoming on their skin, Noiz gets up, and Koujaku averts his eyes when he looks at him slumped against the couch (looks at him from above this time, Koujaku notices), not wanting to see remorse or despise or disappointment, so Noiz leaves and Koujaku still doesn't have a clue about anything. 

 

When he wakes up the next morning, the cube is gone from his bedside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic might result in unwanted casualties if I'm not careful (she knows what she did). 
> 
> If someone happens to be confused about this, no, old man and the brat didn't have some extremely violent sex, they just beat each other up. 
> 
> By the way, I'm feeling really awkward about describing Koujaku's house. Like, I don't think there's an official blueprint of it, so I just make stuff up, and let me tell you, that room list last chapter? A pain in the bottom.
> 
> Thank you for all your lovely comments and/or kudos and things. Constructive criticism is always welcome and badly needed.


	4. In Which Koujaku Runs Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY. I know it's been a long time, and that school is currently out, but then I was in England for two weeks with no laptop and couldn't write and I really don't know what I even did, this is like 5300 words, what the hell. I just. I don't know. This is following anime episodes, which is totally inconsistent with the timeline up until now, so please bear with me, it was just something I felt I needed to get out of the way. I PROMISE SOMETHING ACTUALLY HAPPENS, THOUGH, OKAY. I mean. I don't know how much it counts as happening. I mean. It is progress. But now I probably hyped everyone up for nothing. What am I doing. Please don't hate me. 
> 
> Okay, rant over. I'm sorry for this, bye.

If he steps off the track for one moment and looks at his actions outwardly, he realizes that it has always started with Aoba, as it does now, too. 

He doesn't think about it too much, because it is factual, it is not a decision but an instinct, always has been, engraved so deeply into his core by now that he couldn't get rid of it even if he wanted to, so there is not much point in questioning it anyway. 

It is simply that he has a habit of protecting him, that Aoba's well-being is one of the crucial factors of his happiness and life in general, and that that will never change. 

When he catches himself like that, once, he muses that those exact things will be the death of him one day. 

* * *

The cube, as it turns out, is not the only thing that disappears that day. 

The call comes sometime still early, while Koujaku is busy dragging himself around his house before it becomes necessary for him to go out. He looks at the ID and frowns. A tap on the screen and, “Is something wrong, Daichi?” There is no plausible reason for them to be contacting him in the morning. None. Except... 

Dread settles around him and clouds his eyes, pushes in through his nose and mouth. Except. Except. 

Silence stretches for maybe two seconds in total, and he wants to scream at them to tell him, to spit it out already, because whatever it is, there is probably no time to lo– 

Daichi gulps. “Koujaku.... Dry Juice is – They – They are – They're gone.”

 

He runs. 

He runs faster than he remembers running for a long time now, and when he arrives, his teammates are giving him terrified looks. He must be quite a sight, he thinks, almost, heck, almost amused, with his wild, animal, monstrous (he knows how they look, he knows the red that is undoubtedly bubbling just beneath the surface) eyes and panting like he hasn't taken a proper breath in ten years. He pretends he doesn't see it, ties his undone kimono to hide the purple-colored skin on his sides and his arms. He observes the empty streets and the painted-over tags. He feels the pressure of anger and confusion and fear, ready to burn through him. He shuts it down and calls Aoba. 

 

Here they are again, and Koujaku should really stop getting so surprised in these situations, because coming unprepared can, at this rate, simply be considered as idiotic, but dammit, this is not what he signed up for when he got drunk that night. 

And why does it never cease to fascinate him, in a sickening kind of way, how the beansprout just pops up wherever, whenever, how it pays him no mind until Koujaku forces it to, how it stares him calmly in the face like it sees him for the first time, how all of that still manages to trigger the emotional switch he fears, the one he so expertly managed to push to the off side before, that not even those yakuza twins earlier could flip back on?

He doesn't even know what is Noiz doing here (when does he know?), he is only aware of Aoba arriving and them being worried together for not even five whole minutes before he shows up out of nowhere and starts spewing his challenges and ultimatums again, and Koujaku doesn't even have to get mad on his own behalf. _It is for Aoba._ Funnily enough, it almost always is. It always was. Familiarity washes over him as he charges, strangely reminiscent of last night. Where's the harm in one more time? 

Aoba is yelling at them to stop, that that is _enough_ , but it is not. When will it be? He doesn't know that either. 

When Akushima shows up, Noiz turns to them and says, “This is not over”, and Koujaku knows it is supposed to be directed to Aoba (he... thinks it is), but he can't help but feel the words slither across his flesh much more meaningfully than they were supposed to. 

He has no idea do they end up running into two completely opposite directions on purpose or not, but it, somewhat surprisingly, doesn't seem like a bad idea, so he just tunes everything out and runs with all he has. 

 

Aoba doesn't answer his Coil. 

Not for the second time, or the third, or after Koujaku has made so many calls he has lost count of them. He reasons with himself that Aoba might be busy, that one of the weirdos that he seemed to attract lately might have had something to discuss with him, and while he feels nauseous at the thought, he has been doting on Aoba so much lately that it is entirely possible he is already sick of him. 

He manages to pull through the rest of the day like that. 

When Aoba still doesn't answer in the morning, however, he does the only reasonable thing – he abandons everything and heads straight to the Seragaki house. 

He is, appallingly, not taken aback when he finds no one home. 

 

The first thing he hears is, “MASTER!” before a loud _thump_ sounds and Aoba – Aoba, he's okay, he's alright – yelps before sighing and starting to scold. Koujaku finds himself at the door after two steps, and yes, that's him, he's okay – he makes sure, he asks, and then – 

How did he not hear the motorcycle? The head of Scratch is staring at him, unimpressed, and Koujaku almost feels relieved for getting pissed at something that isn't himself or a gangly beansprout for the first time in days, but he is too exhausted from worrying over this and that to put up a decent fight, so he lets Aoba calm him down, that time and again when they are in the house, after he finds out that Tae-san is gone and they don't know who took her or what is happening to her. 

He doesn't know how Mink, or his Allmate, or whatever, senses it, but maybe it's the same feeling of being watched that he had when the cube was in his possession – and suddenly he can't help but wonder does Noiz have one specific cube he leaves at people's places, or are there different ones for different people and does he differentiate them at all. Was the one in his bedroom just an information-gathering device as well?

When Mink concludes that they should involve Noiz, too, he has no control over the, “Hey!” that escapes his mouth. Nobody seems to notice, though, or just ignores it, and what feels like moments later, he has Noiz sitting next to him on the couch, not close enough for physical contact, but not far enough for comfort, either. He must've been in the neighborhood, and Koujaku finds himself thinking about what does this brat even do with its time. 

And then it's... normal. Kind of doesn't-matter-who-you're-sitting-next-to, we're-just-planning-how-to-save-out-friend's-grandmother normal, easy to ask questions and talk and Koujaku... Koujaku feels like an idiot. 

 

When they are already running into the building, he looks over his shoulder. Not for an elaborate reason, not even because of one of his goddamn instincts. He just sort of _does_ , looks over his shoulder at Noiz, who stays back in the bushes with his monitors and his holograms and all of his cubes and doesn't look up. 

Koujaku turns around and runs faster. 

 

They are all sitting around Aoba's living/dining room, and they are directly across from each other yet again. This time, neither of them looks up, and later, Koujaku sees him exit while he is not even halfway down the hall. When he reaches the door, Noiz is already nowhere in sight. 

Not that it matters, though. Koujaku has more important things to tend to right now. 

 

He finds Mink in an alleyway not too far away, looking like he is contemplating the most complicated matters of the universe. Koujaku sympathizes, he really does, but he has business with him that can't wait for Mink figure out the meaning of life. 

He goes straight to the matter at hand, seeing no point in beating around the bush. He seems ridiculous to himself. This guy irritated him just as much as the brat did, and just as he was taking some consolation from the fact that he wanted to lash out on both of them equally, he figured he could actually still act like a functional human being around an ex-convict but not around a _teenager_. 

When Mink smiles, in that underlining sort of way, and notices that it must be nice not knowing anything, Koujaku thinks how he doesn't even know how wrong he is. Koujaku doesn't know, he doesn't know anything, and it is driving him insane. 

“He deceives people”, and, for a split second, Koujaku has no clue who is Mink talking about. 

 

Koujaku stares at the invitation and rolls the question _why_ in his head, although that is nothing new by now, before doing the only thing that makes sense in the given situation – he calls Aoba. 

“Listen, I'm thinking about going to Platinum Jail.” 

_What?_ Koujaku tells him to wait, that he is going, too – but Aoba doesn't listen to him and soon hangs up. Fortunately, Koujaku is still capable of making up his mind about one thing. It is true, he doesn't know much – but at the moment, he knows he wants to help Aoba and he knows that he is going to Platinum Jail. And that is entirely enough. 

He starts running. 

 

They meet at the entrance, and Koujaku is not sure did they arrive here at the same time or did they wait and who did, but, “You were planning to go by yourself?”

Aoba averts his eyes, mouth stretching in a way that tells Koujaku clearly that he feels guilty. “You know how close we are. You can involve me in anything.” He feels like he needs to remind him, for some reason, and mentally curses his own insecurity. 

Aoba smiles, and Koujaku's heart beats just the tiniest bit faster, and he feels the same tiniest bit reassured. “Thanks.”

They face the weirdness trapped inside a panda body together. 

 

The lights are pretty. 

Koujaku... apparently isn't in the state to shape any other coherent thought. 

But... they are so pretty. So shiny, so bright. Sparkling like stars on water, like sun in the evening, like a pair of golden eyes, and Koujaku wants to stare at them forever. The lights seemed to be inviting him to stare at them forever. 

Koujaku _will_ stare at them forever. 

Why not just stay here and look at them for the rest of eternity, at those gorgeous gold and green hues, at how they seem to dance around, so enticing that there is not room for anything but being completely devoted to following their movements. 

Gold and green. 

“ – jaku. _Koujaku_!”

The voice sounds like it is coming to him thorough pressure that would build itself up in your ears after a long time on the road or in the air. 

Luckily, this isn't anyone's voice. 

It's not strange, not really. After all, Aoba _was_ always his anchor. 

 

“Are you alright, Koujaku?”

He is not. He still sees the lights, as if they have been glued to the underside of his eyelids. He feels dizzy, and the whole thing makes him want to throw up. Not too different from being hungover, he compares halfheartedly. He winces at the sudden intrusion of car headlights to his vision, shielding his eyes partly, yet he still follows it as it comes to a stop by a side door. He frowns. Who drives a fancy car like that to a club? 

In the next moment, Koujaku's gaze clouds, and in the one after that, color seeps into it. 

He takes after the man who ruined his life, barely aware of Aoba calling him. 

 

He lost him. 

No matter what he was here for, not matter who he was here for, no matter what his intentions were, no matter was he here for fun or business, Koujaku thinks as he pushes his way through the mass of dancing, sweaty bodies and air as thick as butter, music thudding around him in an incredibly distracting and irritating manner, ringing in his ears and trying to slow him down, there is only one important thing right now, and that is for him to find Ryuuhou and kill him. 

He assaults the man behind the bar, breathing heavily as something is trying to drag him down, like he is drowning in bottomless water. He grabs him by the shirt, forcefully dragging him to his face. His other hand is supporting him, flattened against the bar-top. The man looks at him with some sort of a confused frown on his face, like he is wondering why is he not completely brainwashed by now. (Koujaku is neither blind nor stupid. He's seen enough to know what's going on.) When Koujaku clings on and shows no apparent signs of letting go or going glassy-eyed any time soon, however, he starts looking somewhat scared. He grabs Koujaku's wrists and tries to yank them away, but the fabric of his shirt (something Koujaku couldn't recognize even if he had times to ponder it, new and glossy and screaming Platinum Jail) rips a bit and Koujaku grabs a new handful and growls, the murder blinding his mind clearly showing somewhere on his face because the man gulps and stumbles a bit while trying to get his phone to call what is presumably a superior. He says something Koujaku can't hear, and goddammit, would they _hurry up_ , as if all those years of waiting weren't enough. He pulls the guy closer again and grinds, “I am Ryuuhou's client”, through his teeth. The other repeats that to the phone's speaker, but they. Are. Taking. So. Fucking. Long. 

Koujaku snarls, reaches out and punches the phone from the guy's hand. “Listen, you shithead, if you don't tell me where Ryuuhou is in the next five seconds, I swear to gods that I'm going to break your skull on the nearest fucking speaker.” He is lucky. The guy proves to be a coward, choking on tears that started to flow sometime before or later and pointing a shaking finger to the door next to the counter. “Second room to the right”, he stutters out, and Koujaku pushes him into the row of glass bottles behind him and storms off like all fires of hell are chasing him. 

It is on the way to the second room to the right that he realizes he left Aoba behind. 

 

He remembers only one other time when he was this angry, and that time, he killed everyone in his vicinity, with the apparent exception of the bastard sitting on the other side of the room. 

He. He _dares_. He DARES asking him who he is. 

He feels every nerve ending in his body trembling. His lips are quivering so much he can't speak straight. His whole body shakes, he is losing balance, his stomach is chewing on itself, and he is swallowing tears and spit he wants to send to his face, he wants to _crush_ him, snap his bones in half, to see his skin _breaking_ under his feet, he wants to tear him _apart_ – 

Aoba is lying on the bed, shirt lifted and a needle hovering over his back. 

_You can't ruin us both._

He feels them blooming. _Destroy your creator._

He sees red. 

* * *

He thinks that once, only once, but once is enough. 

* * *

When Aoba enters his head, he feels himself falling apart. 

Layer by layer of skin, muscle fibers separating, bones crumbling to dust, hair falling out, eyes melting away, until he is burned down utterly, there is nothing more left to bare, nothing else left to cover his sins, and his soul spills out onto the floor and washes over walls and over Aoba. 

And it is _painful_. So overwhelming, so pure and genuine and raw, it is hard to even exist, physically and emotionally, as he watches everything rewind before him and hears someone screaming. Maybe it's his mom. Maybe it's him. 

It feels incredibly... intimate, in a way. He is naked and exposed, and if it still mattered right here, right now, he would probably try to cover himself like a blushing maiden. 

_I wouldn't let anyone but you see me like this._

Aoba is watching him with those worried eyes, standing, in his bodily form, not even a meter away from him, but Koujaku feels him, feels him all around himself, like his own essence overflowed Koujaku's head, if that's where they are right now, and he knows Aoba doesn't just see his tattoos and his body but everything, that stripped form of his, that he sees it and feels it and knows it. 

He tells him... everything. About his dad, Ryuuhou, the tattoos, the sea of blood. About his mom. About how close the tip of the sword he used to kill so many people was to his chest. 

“I remembered the way you smiled when you were little... and I just couldn't help crying.” 

About why he couldn't do it. 

_It was you. It is always you._

“I was in so much pain... I was so sad... “ 

I know. I know. I'm sorry. 

“I truly wanted to die, but I wanted to live just as much.” 

Because of me?

_Because of you. It is always because of you._

He extends his left arm, one uncontrolled limb making its way to his cheek, while Aoba stares at him with either his own of Koujaku's pain reflecting on his face. He doesn't touch him, of course. He never could. Just out of reach. Just that one millimeter too far. 

_You were never mine._

“I didn't know what to do anymore... so I ended back up on Midorijima where you were. I thought things might be okay if I saw you again.” 

He doesn't see the smile, but rather feels it touching him, hitting every part of him, traveling along his virtues and flaws and memories, and it so sad, so bitter, that he feels his every cell howling in agony. 

I know. I'm sorry, Koujaku. I'm so sorry. 

“But it was no use.”

He knows what comes next. 

“No matter how much I wish for peace... When let my guard down, I remember... That day when everything was covered in blood... Cutting down Ryuuhou won't change anything... “

There isn't really much left to do. All is out, and there is nothing else he owes the world. 

“So... “

“Don't.”

The word rings out, clear as morning dew, coming out of Aoba's mouth and bouncing off the inside of Koujaku's skull. 

“That might be okay with you, but what about everyone you're leaving behind?”

_Leaving behind?_

“What about Benishigure?”

_No, no, don't say it. Please, don't say it._

“What about me?”

_You. Why is it always you?_

He knew Aoba would try to stop him. But... 

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?” 

I'm sorry, Koujaku. I really am. 

“You'll have to live with those tattoos for the rest of your life. But we... I know just who you are.”

_Do you, Aoba? Do you?_

He closes his eyes. 

“No matter what sins and fate you bear – “

_I let you see it all. Did you see it, Aoba? Did you?_

“ – the man I know called Koujaku won't change at all.”

He says it once, out loud, like a sort of prayer or a plea or a promise. “Aoba... “

“No matter how many times you might lose yourself, I'll say it as many times as it takes... “

I will. 

“I'll say just who the real Koujaku is.”

_How?_ Why?

Because I saw you. 

“And that no matter what, I'll always believe in him.”

Which is why – 

“So don't lose, Koujaku.”

It hurts. 

_It hurts._

\- you must let me go.

“Don't lose to your tattoos and your past.”

_I love you._

“Koujaku... I'm going to destroy you.”

Again with the smile, the same sad and bitter one, the one that is already destroying him. 

No. You don't. 

Not anymore.

“I'm going to destroy the Koujaku that's bound to your past.”

The one that is bound to me.

And just like that, it's gone. It's all gone. Floating away like it was never there in the first place, and he is light, so light that he could float away, too. 

And then he senses something wet, and he knows Aoba is crying, and the same way as the invisible smile, every drop pierces through him like a poisonous dagger drenched in salt. 

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Koujaku. 

_No._

 _No._

 _

… Thank you. 

_

 

He wakes up in a burning building, and the first thing he notices is Aoba lying on the floor. 

“Aoba, can you stand?”

Aoba looks up at him through the smoke and calls his name, broken in half, like its bearer has been until moments ago. 

Now he is strong, so strong, so whole and healed that he wants to spread his arms and laugh, to take Aoba's hands and spin them around. Instead, he helps Aoba up and puts him on his back, barely feeling any weight at all. “We're getting out of here... together.” 

Aoba smiles, and they run out of the fire with Ren at their heels. 

 

Aoba is so weak that he passes out practically right after they get to the street. The way was clear, and he supposes even brainwashed people have enough sense left to not stay inside an incinerated nightclub. Or maybe someone has told them to get out. Koujaku doesn't know, and frankly, he doesn't care. 

He stands rooted to the spot for a minute, thinking about what the fuck is he supposed to do now, where is he supposed to go, before remembering the invitation. Careful to not let Aoba slip down, he fumbles with his Coil and pulls it up, then gets Beni to navigate him to the so-called Glitter. 

The door opens automatically when he swipes the invitation in front of the small recognition screen, revealing a cozy living room. He lays Aoba down on one of the couches and smiles fondly at his curled-up form. It makes sense. Curing somebody so thoroughly from inside them must take a lot of effort. 

He decides to explore a little, firstly snooping around the bottom floor, discovering a kitchen and a bathroom, before going upstairs. He finds several bedrooms with attached lavatories along with something of a common room to the other side of the hall. It is all clean, furnished simply but elegantly, but as nothing all that interesting pops up, he fetches a pillow from one of the rooms and goes back down. He lifts Aoba's head gently before nesting the item beneath it, nodding contentedly when Aoba wiggles a bit but doesn't wake up. 

He sits down next to him and grins at the ceiling. This is the literal best he felt since... well, since a really long time ago. 

He feels as if he knew, maybe, for some time now, that he stopped loving Aoba somewhere along the way. The problem with that was that Aoba was his constant, the one thing in his life that he could always go back to, and stopping to love him would mean that that constant was gone. 

He rolls his eyes at himself for his stupidity. 

Aoba was here, was he not? And as far as he could see, neither of them was going anywhere. 

He hears Ren say something as Aoba shifts behind him. “I... was asleep?”

He predictably tries to rise, so Koujaku equally predictably pushes him back down. Some things never do change. 

The sentiment gets confirmed as Aoba tries to shoo _him_ to bed instead, and they both start apologizing for getting the other involved. _It's funny, isn't it? How we helped each other in the end._

He can't control his giddiness anymore, and a laugh bubbles up and escapes from his mouth. 

“I guess we're a lot alike”, Aoba concludes as he watches him, hair spilled across the pillow and fatigue still threaded through his eyelashes, a sight that, in the past, would've forced Koujaku's breath to hitch and possibly made him horny. He thinks back to the day after he got himself into into the the whole Noiz-y mess, when he found Aoba listening to music on his bed upon coming to his house, and how the picture made him feel safe and assured, but nothing dirtier. He thinks even more back, and he doesn't remember the last instance he felt that way. _Koujaku, you fucking idiot._ “Like how we're completely useless when it's something about ourselves.”

_Yes. That's why we need each other_ , Koujaku wants to tell him, but Aoba understands anyway, so he settles with just, “You could be right.”

They talk past and happy days, and Aoba tells him he hasn't changed at all, which he reckons is both true and not. _The same as you._

“To me, you were the hero who was always there to save me.” 

And as much as you think I don't need you anymore, I still do. 

_Maybe we've just grown. Grown to be each other's heroes._

“Yeah, nothing's changed.”

_Except me. And you. Us both._

But if you say it like that, doesn't that mean everything still stayed the same?

_Yes. Yes, it does._

 

Somewhat later that night, he starts feeling exhausted. As it turns out, housing another person in a head designed for one can be quite tiring. He hauls himself to bed. 

He doesn't _leave_ the bed for two days. 

 

Approximately 24 hours after his and Aoba's arrival at Glitter, he is awaken by shuffling downstairs. His internal alarms sound, so he sneaks out of his room quietly. He still feels a bit unsure on his legs, but manages to reach the stairs safely. 

Wait. Is that...?

He leans over the railing and yes, sure enough, there is Aoba, Clear (with half his clothes burned down, what the hell?) and... 

Koujaku is a brave man. He is a leader of a Rib team. He has seen things that would make other people sick in their stomachs. 

Koujaku, the courageous, tough man that everyone in Benishigure and some other teams looked up to, a man covered in scars as symbols of his rough past, upon seeing an underage, gangly beansprout, runs back to his room as quickly as his legs would take him. 

To this day, he can't think about it without wishing he was never born. 

 

Koujaku can't quite point it out, but something about the plan to mess up the most powerful man on the island's plans single-handedly has _Aoba_ written all over. Maybe it's the shameless self-sacrifice. Or the incurable stubbornness. Maybe both. Probably both. 

He thinks it could be because he's known the idiot for so long, but after waking up in the middle of the night, with his first thought being to check is Aoba still here (promptly discovering he is not), and coming downstairs ready for action, he finds Noiz sitting on the couch, and maybe it's just his imagination but he looks kinda indecisive. 

He stays at the bottom of the stairs for a bit and stares at him. It occurs to him he has been doing that a lot lately, but Noiz doesn't really seem to notice. He was sure he overdone it the first day he officially came back from the dead and found Aoba and Noiz in the kitchen, discussing Clear's health, but Noiz seemed to be too caught up with explaining something to pay him any mind. He guesses. 

(Speaking of which, he can't believe he didn't even entertain the question of how the fuck Aoba managed to get into his head. Meaning, that is weird. Right? It isn't an everyday thing for someone to be able to rummage through your brain as they like, right? And Koujaku still – Just – Gods.)

This time, for some reason, proves to be different (it's just his luck), as Noiz suddenly jerks and turns to face him. Koujaku very firmly urges himself to not inch backwards. They look at each other for a long, awkward moment before Koujaku closes his eyes and sighs. Opening them again, he asks softly, “What are you doing here?” He already asked him the question once before, he grasps. With a different tone and an inevitably differetn answer, though. 

“Same thing as you.”

It takes him a moment to remember Noiz was also Scrapped, and he consecutively gets unbearably curious, but this not being the right time nor the right place (there might never be such a thing), he shakes it off and laughs. “If that's so, shall we go?”

A pause. “Yeah.”

 

He lets Noiz lead the way, as it is far more likely they will not get lost with actual digital cards of the place, keeping himself at a safe distance. They don't talk, but the silence is actually sort of nice. It gives him time to think. 

Yeah. Right. As if he didn't have two bedded days to do that. 

Not having much else to do during his recovery, Koujaku's thoughts tended to wonder a lot. Now that some things have been settled, thanks to Aoba, he realized he had some unfinished business, business directly bound to a person that was, how convenient, in front of him right now. 

But while all of that was nice and dandy, it didn't mean that Koujaku actually... That Koujaku managed... That... It didn't mean that he had any more clue about what the fuck was he supposed to do, okay?

Which made this situation kinda... difficult. 

There hasn't been anything he could call progress between them at all, and Noiz acted so normal that Koujaku sometimes thought making something happen would be the wrong step to take here. After all, it was just one night and, for the love of all that's holy, he couldn't explain what made this specific one so special. (Beside possibly the fact that he was sorta un-closeted now. Yeah. That may be it.) So he could – technically – just... let it go? 

This was also weirdly similar to that time, he realizes. Noiz was also walking before him back then, and – Koujaku glances downward – yeah, his ass is still nice. 

He doesn't _want_ to let it go. 

He is done running away. 

He stops. “Hey, brat.”

One heartbeat passes in uncertainty, as he waits to see will he listen to him or not. 

He stops, too, turns around. 

“Come with me for a sec, will you?”

He leads the way to some shadowed alleyway, because dumb things like this always happen in those sort of places. He's sure that if the brat had some capacity for facial expressions, he would be wearing either one of confusion or expectancy. This way, he just looks at Koujaku blankly, and then Koujaku takes his arms and pins them to the wall. Full recreation, because why not?

He makes sure to memorize it all, this time. He lets his hands fall down, rests one on each side of Noiz's jaw, cups just so his palms brush against the skin, moves one to the back of his neck, trails it up, beneath the beanie and into the hair. 

He pulls back without warning, turns on his heel sharply, and walks away. 

And in the moment his eyes open, he looks at Noiz and sees surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KouAo much?
> 
> I feel like I need to tell you that after the kissing scene, I tried to write "away" at one point and accidentaly typed "aw gay". It's a sign, people.
> 
> Anyhow. Um. So. I guess the Scrap scene might have been a bit confusing. You basically have the description and their vocal dialogue written as they normally would have been, and then the internal one with Aoba in normal letters and Koujaku in _cursive_ , and then a bit more of that when they're at Glitter.
> 
> On the bright side, we're finally done with Koujaku being an indecisive wimp. I swear things are gonna start happening from next chapter onwards. Also, I think it would be about time I wrote a chapter from the brat's point of view. Ugh. Hard. I don't think it's gonna be the next one, but one soon after that. Maybe. Possibly. And I finally did some of the editing of previous chapters that I kept talking I would do, and I sorted out the tags a bit. Nothing major, all in all, but in case you are interested... I doubt anyone is interested. 
> 
> As always, thank you for the all the kudos and comments loveliness. Feel free to criticize me. God knows this is no good.


	5. In Which Koujaku Gives up on Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally don't remember the last time I wrote something this quickly. The wonders of having free time and WiFi. It is significantly shorter than the last chapter, though, but I felt like I had a nice ending point there. I don't know when the next one will be up, however, as I am going to my family's seaside house and there is no Internet there, so sorry if there is not an update for a long time.

They were quite literally in the heart of chaos.

And Morphine members just _kept coming_ , Koujaku notices bitterly as he fends another blow. He took a bit of satisfaction from cognition that something really was wrong with those yakuza twins, though that was little consolation in the current situation. 

Well, at least they weren't dead... yet. 

He knocks the guy who was persistently trying to crush his head for the past three minutes out and looks around. Nobody was focused on him, but that was just momentarily. Those things changed pretty quickly around here. Clear is sending two guys flying across the room as he is watching, and Mink is holding his front as well as you could expect from someone his size and skills. Noiz... 

_Noiz_. Noiz is being alarmingly oblivious to the guy who is steadily cornering him from behind, too busy managing all the robot dog-shaped gun things. 

Koujaku checks his surroundings one more time and makes a run for it, coming just in time to block the attack. “What the hell are you sneaking around for?” One well-placed strike later, he is sure the guy is not going to be causing them trouble again anytime soon. 

It is normal. He would do it for Aoba or Clear or anyone else, and Noiz would do it for him, too. He thinks.

He hopes. 

* * *

After they get out of Oval Tower safely and before they part ways, Koujaku going with Aoba just to ensure he makes it home safely, while they are looking at the ruins and feeling like everything's okay and everything's gonna be okay from now on, is the last time he sees Noiz before he vanishes. 

* * *

Three days of copious amounts of sleeping and rest in general later, Koujaku feels much better. Any after-effects of his rather long exposure to brainwashing tactics have disappeared without a trace, and there are only occasional bursts of pain in his head and several still somewhat sore spots. 

He visits Aoba and Tae in the afternoon, to make sure they are both okay and because he is going crazy with restlessness at home, itching for something to do. Aoba opens the door, looking genuinely happy to see him, Tae-san is cooking in the kitchen, there are the same creepy masks on the cupboard in the hallway staring at him, and Koujaku suddenly feels an inexplicable urge to say, “I'm home.”

He always gets dragged into the pace of the Seragaki household way too easily, staying for dinner and later he somehow finds himself at the veranda again. He picks a cigarette from the pack and lights it, breathing in a lungful, exhaling slowly. There are usually no stars you can see from here, but Koujaku still smiles to the sky and whispers, “Thank you”, to the night air. 

He doesn't miss the similarity of the last time he did this, but he made his move. 

Now it was the brat's turn. 

 

After a week, Koujaku's headaches are gone and the bruises have faded. He is already working away, busying himself to the maximum, grateful for the work. He visits the Seragakis regularly, helps Tae-san a bit around the house. He and Aoba talk, usually just about the stuff all best friends talk about. It is nice, it is easy, it is comfortable, and he is thankful for that, especially since he was entirely capable of screwing their friendship up, but he thinks Aoba understands that his confessions and its rejection was something they had to go through for Koujaku to move on (that is, if Aoba ever remembers the internal conversation they had in Koujaku's head, because Koujaku, for the life of him, doesn't understand exactly how Scrap works).

Aoba tells him that Clear dropped by the other day, adds he seemed fine, doesn't have to say that he is relieved. He doesn't mention anyone else, but Koujaku knows that means there is nothing worth mentioning. 

 

Two weeks after the fall of Oval Tower, Koujaku... definitely _doesn't_ start worrying, no, of course not. 

Except maybe he finds if weird that Clear shows up every now and then, and that Aoba sometimes even goes to his place, which apparently needs some serious work and redecorating, to help with that, and even though Mink doesn't show up either, it is something one would expect of him, and maybe he also finds it odd that Noiz would pass up an opportunity to finally get a rematch with Aoba in Rhyme, now that he has already promised he would do it (although Ren is now technically just a machine, and Aoba has been refusing to get another Allmate), and maybe he didn't think that he would actually make him wait this much and maybe he is starting to kinda think that all of this has been a horrible mistake. 

Koujaku catches himself thinking like this more and more often, always proceeding to shake his head and assure himself that yes, this was the right decision to make, that if he just let it be, it would eat him up from the inside, and that he can do nothing but wait now. 

Yeah. Wait. Piece of cake.

 

Three weeks after Platinum Jail stopped existing as anything but a magnificent, gigantic ruin still taking up half the island, Koujaku finds any assurance that Noiz was just trying to make him reach his limits by keeping him on the edge slowly abandoning him. 

Even so, he tries to stay positive. After all, Noiz followed him into that alleyway when he could have just turned around and went away, which, Koujaku realizes with a start, means he trusted him. Yeah. He trusted him enough to do that, and even before that, he did not back away. He helped him, what's more. He's not gonna just leave him hanging now. 

 

A month after they defeat Toue, Koujaku goes to Aoba's with a goal. It took a lot of self-convincing and determination, but he made up his mind. 

Tae lets him inside, which he uses as an opportunity to chat with her for a few moments, as he hasn't done that for a while now (even though he knows he is just stalling as much as he can), before finally climbing the stairs and entering Aoba's room, only to find it empty. He looks around in confusion before calling out, “Aoba?”

He hears a cheerful, “Koujaku-san!” coming from somewhere outside, so he smiles and exits through open veranda doors, craning his neck upward to see Aoba and Clear sitting on the roof and smiling down at him. “Hey. What's up?”

Clear starts babbling happily about one thing or another, and Koujaku lets himself get lost in the conversation for a while, laughing here and there, but he knows he has to do what he came here to do, so after they sink into a comfortable silence, he swallows and starts, “Say... Aoba. Clear seems to be hanging around here a lot recently... “

“Eh?! I'm sorry, Koujaku-san, are you bothered by my being here?”

“What? No, no, of course not! I've just been wondering did you”, he swallows again, “hear anything from the others. From Mink, I mean, and... and Noiz”, he finishes as casually as possible, trying to sound like this was just something he randomly got curious about, and not a question he has been dying to know the answer to for the last few days. 

Aoba gives him a side look, and maybe it's just Koujaku's imagination going wild on him but he has kind of a weird expression on his face. It lasts a second before he sighs and says, “No, I'm afraid. Neither of them have contacted me for about a month now.”

Koujaku makes an effort to not show how disappointed he is by gulping down and saying, “I... see.”

 

A week after that visit to Aoba, Koujaku is being miserable. 

What if he just read the situation wrong? What if, for Noiz, he was just a one-night stand that he felt he needed to console before going on with his life? What if he disgusted him so much with that kiss that he doesn't want to see his face ever again? Or worse, what it that kiss didn't mean anything to him either, and he just decided to ignore it? 

What if he left for good?

 

A month and a half passes, and still nothing. 

Koujaku replays the kiss in his head. This time, there is nothing hazy about it, and he clearly remembers the press of lips, the texture, the metal taste from the piercing in the brat's mouth. 

Noiz kissed him back. Noiz kissed him back both times. 

So why is this happening now?

He feels sort of disgusted with himself, because, gods, when did he become so... dependent?

When did it become so important for someone so annoying and so much younger than him to... what? What does he want? 

He wants to clear things up. Yes. He wants to know what happened and why and what does it mean. 

That is the only plausible answer, because he doesn't even like Noiz, not really, except maybe in the physical sense of body responding to body, but beside that, he is irritating, he is underage, and Koujaku doesn't know anything about him. 

He doesn't even know his real name. 

There is no way any parents would name their child Noiz. Speaking of which, who were Noiz's parents? Where were they? What did they do? Does Noiz still live with them? If not, does he visit them? 

What did he do before joining (possibly founding?) Ruff Rabbit, before getting into Rhyme? What did he do when he wasn't in the field or gathering information? 

And when, for the love of gods, did Koujaku start to care?

 

After a month and three weeks, Koujaku gives up hope. 

 

Two months after he kisses Noiz, Koujaku is at Aoba's house again, and they are sitting on the floor and talking and suddenly Aoba makes a face, like he remembered something important, and Koujaku gets ready to inquire but Aoba beats him to it with, “I almost forgot to tell you, Noiz came by the shop today.”

He freezes. “Really?”

“Yeah. I was just as surprised. Even more so because he was all dressed up, suit and everything.”

He takes a moment to process this. “He was in... a _suit_?”

“Yes.”

“A _suit_?”

“Yes.”

“A goddamn freaking _suit_?”

Aoba starts laughing. “Koujaku, are you okay?”

Koujaku can do little more but stare at him. “Aoba, just... are you sure you didn't mistake him for someone else?”

“Quite positive. Now, are you sure you're alright? You seem a bit out of it.”

Koujaku doesn't know what it is, but something about the image of Noiz in a suit just doesn't seem to sit right with him. He didn't know that the brat even knew what a suit _is_. But, then again, what _does_ he know?

“Yeah, it's okay, I'm just a bit... wow. A suit. Proper suit with a tie?”

“Yup.”

“So he knows how to tie a tie... I'm impressed.”

Aoba is laughing again. “You seem to be awfully interested in this.”

Koujaku doesn't turn red for the sole reason of him being a grown-ass man, and grown-ass men don't fucking blush at a mention of beansprout teenagers. (Oh gods, he is in much deeper than he thought.) “What? No! I'm just surprised that he is civilized enough for something like that. Damn.”

“Yeah, yeah, if you say so.”

Aoba is smiling and Koujaku doesn't really like the undertone the gesture holds. He shoots him a dirty look. 

 

During the following days, Koujaku doesn't quite know what to do with himself, and hates the whole world because of it. 

He keeps drifting off at work and having bursts of nervousness, getting all worked up and flustered when he thinks he might happen upon Noiz at every corner, because now he is _back_. 

Well, to be fair, Koujaku doesn't know did he leave in the fist place, but now he has a confirmation that he still exists, and is _here_ , on Midorijima, and somehow that changes everything. 

He knows he wanted him to be back, so he could make his move and change the pat position they were stuck in, but now he is starting to wonder if that was such a good idea. 

No. No, he has to go through with this. This is what he's been waiting for. He wants closure. 

Noiz has not seeked him out yet, though, resulting with him, on top of debating constantly with himself about does he want to do something or not, in the moments he does, also getting impatient. 

So, on the third day after Noiz's visit to Aoba's workplace, he doesn't go to Black Needle in the evening, as he usually does, but instead to the bar Aoba took them to that night. 

It is a cozy little place, he notices as he sits at the counter, although it is admittedly kind of stupid to believe that Noiz is just gonna come to this place again, and on this one of all days at that, but it is his best shot, seeing as he doesn't know where he lives and there's no way in hell he's asking Aoba for his number. 

He waits there for most of the evening, with only a glass of beer to provide him company, but Noiz doesn't show up. _Figures. Why would he?_

He goes home sometime late, refusing to feel disappointed. 

 

Next day, he is back at the bar. 

He tried to argue with himself about it even as he was walking toward the place, but his legs moved on their own and he was there before he could even fully comprehend the unreasonable aspect of that act. 

He is grumpy as he sits at the counter (again) and orders himself a beer (again) while contemplating going for something stronger. As it started, it could only do him good to get wasted tonight. 

As he is taking the first sip, a voice uncomfortably close to his ear whispers, “Drinking again, old man?”

Koujaku freezes. Slowly, very slowly, he turns around in his seat and, sure enough, there is Noiz right there in front of him and holy shit, Aoba wasn't lying. 

There is a suit, alright, one that fits him so well Koujaku is willing to bet it was tailored specifically for him, with a vest and a jacket and dress pants and a shirt and a _tie_ , without that stupid hat and without piercings and just _holy shit_. 

_No. Oh, no. No no no no no. This is not happening. This is not fucking happening, no –_

That looks so unfairly good on him. So unfairly good that Koujaku – 

_Goddammit, no –_

\- Koujaku is getting a little bit turned on. 

He is done with living, so he might as well die from embarrassment right now. 

The brat seems almost satisfied with itself, and Koujaku pleads the ground to swallow him. Or Noiz. Or both of them. 

Noiz inclines his head to the side in a silent invitation, then heads to the door. Koujaku, against all better judgment, follows, justifying it as this maybe being his only chance to set things straight. (He sighs silently. Not that he has a chance of being straight ever again.)

They're in yet another back street. This is going to become a trend soon, Koujaku muses, but he doesn't have much time to think about anything else as Noiz is closing in on him with a predatory grin on his face and _what is going on, wait, no –_

“So”, Noiz purrs out when Koujaku is flush against the wall, “do I have to get you drunk first? Or are you fine to go as you are?”

Koujaku can form only one coherent thought: _Fuck._

 

He kept his tongue piercing, Koujaku realizes as Noiz uses his mouth for rather unethical purposes in an area located decidedly lower than his mouth. _That little shit._

 

He, predictably, wakes up alone and proceeds to groan into the pillow and not get out of bed for another hour, because, for the love of gods, what did he just drag himself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! We finally have them actually contacting, wow, I can't believe how much it took for me to get them here. I'm a horrible person. 
> 
> Sorry for the lack of smut, but I never wrote it before and I get cringe attacks from just thinking about it, because it would be undeniably awful. Eh. Maybe sometime in the future. With a gigantic MAYBE. 
> 
> In other news, I think it might be possible that my dad read the end of this, as I caught him snooping around my laptop when I left the document up (and he also closed it, even more suspicious), and if he figured out what that second-to-last sentence meant, I will die.


	6. In Which Koujaku Experiences a Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back hooome. I have Interneeet. Fortunately, I still had my laptop with me, so I could write and oh, wow, I managed to cough this out. Enjoy as much as you can.

The next night, Koujaku dreams, in a way vivid enough to stick to his senses even after he wakes up. 

It is not a strange thing in itself, no, but what is disturbing is that he dreams of the past. 

He thought, maybe naïvely, that those projections of his subconscious are going to stop now, now that he was Scrapped, but it actually makes some sort of sense – to live through it all once more, to know that he is now at peace with himself and everything he did, everything left in his monstrous wake. 

And it is a rather harmless memory, really, not even from the time of the disaster – just a green field, one of the last traces of nature even then, trees in the distance and the wind in his mother's hair as she smiles down at him. It has to be one of his earliest, he thinks, if not the first, but it doesn't leave him with the knowledge that it is not going to last forever, that it will disappear in a swirl of ink and blood, that happiness on both their faces is going to fade away, but with the simple enjoyment of remembering the feeling of a parent's arms around him once more, shielding him from everything that is about to come, a notion so pleasant that he wakes up with a smile on his face. 

(His mother did always have beautiful hair.)

* * *

A term has already been coined for the – the – the state they find themselves in. Koujaku knows this. Koujaku is very aware of that fact. But there are several problematic circumstances that kind of prevent _friends with benefits_ from applying to them fully. 

The joke: they are not what any normal person would define as friends. 

Koujaku has friends. Koujaku knows what friends are supposed to act like. And what Koujaku has with Noiz looks absolutely nothing like what Koujaku has with Benishigure or Mizuki or, gods forbid, Aoba. They don't chat amiably, they don't kid around, and he certainly wouldn't say they feel all that comfortable in each other's company. They don't even _communicate_ if the situation doesn't ask for it. (What name do you put on a relationship that consists entirely of fighting and fucking? Nope, it is not friends, and it is not complicated enough to be enemies, too intimate for acquaintances.)

The punchline: whatever anybody else might say, these are not exactly what you would call benefits. At least in Koujaku's case. At least not for his general mental state. 

Remind him again – just why did he think this was a good idea?

 

It goes something like this: Koujaku will come home after work, sometime sooner or later in the afternoon. About an hour after he does so, there will be a knock on his door. Not a ring, but a knock. Koujaku will, already knowing better than to be occupied with anything at the time after the first few instances, open the door and let Noiz in. The next part varies a bit, depending on where they lose patience (aka the hall, the stairs, the bedroom, the living room and it is probably better to stop there), but they almost always end up on the bed this way or that. When they are done, Koujaku will turn his back on Noiz and force himself asleep basically instantly, inescapably on the left side of the bed. When he wakes up, be it in the middle of the night or the next morning, he will be alone. 

(Koujaku will then proceed to clench his teeth and mutter a “Goddammit” into his pillow.)

During the two weeks the charade has been going on, it is always the same, like clockwork, robotic routine, but to make matters either worse or better, depending on your point of view (seeing how Koujaku currently isn't too sure of his), he has had two more dreams. The first one is just an unclear image of him walking around Midorijima as a child, and the second one about the time he meets Aoba. 

* * *

He comes across the bullies by coincidence, does the typical heroic act of saving whom he believes to be a little girl. “Hey, it's okay now, they're gone. What's your name?”

A sniffle. “A-Aoba.” He ignores the twinge of surprise at that and puts up a bright smile. “That's a nice name. Are you okay? What did they do to you?” 

Aoba looks at him with tearful eyes. “T-they touched m-my ha-hair. I d-don't like when they do t-that. It h-hurts.” Koujaku contemplates for a moment is that an exaggerated description, but brushes it off and takes Aoba's hand. “Come on, Aoba, let's get you home. Where do you live?”

He navigates the way from what Aoba tells him, lets him show him the exact location. When the doors open, Aoba rushes into his grandmother's embrace, and the old lady seems grateful enough to invite Koujaku in for dinner. By the time he has to leave, Aoba has transformed into a ball of cheerfulness, asking Koujaku can they meet again to play. Koujaku says yes. 

* * *

Mizuki is staring at him with an unsatisfied expression. 

He has, in fact, been doing that for the better part of Koujaku's stay in the Black Needle. He would serve Koujaku his drink, start cleaning a glass, put it down with sudden determination carved into his facial features, open his mouth, close them, shake his head and return to polishing it until Koujaku would down his alcohol and ask for more. 

And after an hour of the same thing repeating itself over and over and over again, Koujaku has had enough. “What?” he snaps the next time Mizuki fails to voice whatever it is that is bothering him. “Would you spit it out already?” He chokes on his words the very next moment. He didn't mean to be so rude, but he is already somewhat intoxicated by now and his tongue is getting in front of his brain. 

Mizuki doesn't seem particularly fazed. He still looks at him in the same disapproving manner, but he finally puts his handiwork down and grips the bar-top with both hands. “Koujaku. You have been getting drunk here increasingly often lately.”

Koujaku shrugs and tries to take a sip from his glass, only to discover it empty. He passes it to Mizuki, who glares at him in return but still refills it. “So? 's not like it's the first time.”

Mizuki hesitates. “Yes, but... But it used to be only occasionally before. When you were really stressed or... I don't know. I'm just worried about you.”

Koujaku waves a hand at him “'s okay, I tell ya. There's nothing for you to worry about.”

Mizuki picks up his glass again and begins to absentmindedly run a rag over it. Koujaku finds himself entranced by the movement. The glass looks really shiny, and he idly wonders has Mizuki been rubbing the same one since he entered his bar. “Listen, Koujaku, we're friends, right?”

Koujaku nods solemnly, watches as Mizuki plays with the glass nervously. “And friends tell each other things, yeah?” Koujaku nods again, vaguely aware of where this is going. “So I just want you to know that you can tell me... well, anything. Anything that's bothering you, or that has been on your mind a lot lately. Sometimes it is better to let it out.”

Koujaku knows he is just trying to help him, a surge of gratefulness for having such a good and caring friend bubbling inside of him, but, somehow, what Mizuki says only manages to make him feel worse, both because he has been keeping something from him and made him troubled for his sake and because _this is what friends should be like_. 

He does have a point, though, he has to admit that. Koujaku has been drunk more often than not lately, finding no other way to shush his buzzing thoughts, alcohol providing him a few hours of blessed blank-mindedness, so dumping his concerns on Mizuki might do him some good, but Koujaku doesn't think he wants to do that. At least not yet. 

At least not until he realizes what his problem is, anyway. 

He offers Mizuki the best smile he can muster and says, “I know. And thanks, but it's okay. Really.”

When Mizuki makes a face that tells Koujaku he clearly doesn't believe him, he adds, smile turning a bit bitter, “For now.”

 

On occasions like that, Koujaku stumbles home sometime after midnight, meaning there's no brat for him to deal with at his house and a killer hangover in the store for him in the morning. (He sometimes thinks about what happens when Noiz shows up at his place on his nights out, does he, when no one answers his knock, try again or just turns away and leaves. 

Both options scare him a bit.)

He unlocks his door and climbs the stairs, falling face first on his bed. The bed where – 

He groans and presses the heels of his hands to his eyelids. This was supposedly a step forward. This was getting out of the awkward phase of dancing in a circle around one another, waiting for something to strike. Then why didn't it feel like it? The transition included no word exchange whatsoever, it just kind of came to be, from them avoiding each other to having sex every other day. And to make matters worse, Koujaku has no idea why is he so unhappy about it. He said to himself that he wanted closure, and, well, he supposes this is it, right? This was, apparently, the default for them. It is never going to escalate any higher than that, and it could one day just fall apart and stop being. And Koujaku should be okay with that. Koujaku _is_ okay with that. He will have one less annoying beansprout in his life if that happens. It was them using each other for pleasure for as long as they felt like it, and when they have enough, they are going to drop the whole thing and probably never see one another again. 

And that should be perfectly fine, right? 

Right. 

Yes. 

_(… No... )_

* * *

The night after that particular visit to Mizuki's bar, he dreams again. 

It's set a little bit after his and Aoba's first meeting, centered around their second encounter; he is shuffling around the neighborhood, no particular location in mind, with a passing thought that he might drop by the playground. He is almost there when suddenly something small runs into him at full speed and he is greeted by a happy squeal of, “Koujaku, Koujaku!” It takes him only a moment to process the blue mane that is the only thing he sees from above before Aoba lifts his head and grins at him, eliciting a smile from him, too, as he reaches out a hand to pat his hair. Aoba flinches a bit at that, making Koujaku catch himself and retract the limb immediately. “Ah, I'm sorry, it was just a reflex. I forgot you don't like having your hair touched.”

Aoba fervently shakes his head. “Nuh-uh, I don't mind! It's okay if it's you, Koujaku!”

Koujaku's smile widens a fraction. “Alright then. What do you wanna do?”

* * *

In the morning, he wakes up groggy and cranky, feeling reluctance to drag himself out of bed despite being a morning person in general. He makes coffee and smokes a cigarette with breakfast, which he hardly ever does, grudgingly gets ready and leaves the house with stormy thoughts. 

He guesses their swirling shows, because his customers notice, asking what is wrong, but he waves them all off with a quirk of lips and a shake of head, claiming it is nothing. 

He has an easy schedule today, maybe because it is the middle of the week, and it is not until his last appointment of the day that something changes. 

He has washed her hair and is just combing through it in preparation for cutting when she turns to him with a knowing expression and says, “Say, Koujaku-san, something is bothering you, nee?”

He gives her a smile, thinks how this is just one more, last lie of the day, not including the ones he tells himself. “I appreciate your concern, but I wouldn't say something is.”

She seems even more sure of herself when she says, turning forward again, “I see, so it _is_ a matter of the heart.”

He allows himself a moment of astonishment, because even if someone else suspected something, they either didn't say it or dismissed it. He has quite a reputation, after all. 

He reaches for scissors, not saying anything to her statement purely for not having a smart reply to that. When he looks forward, she catches his eyes in the mirror. He tries for a weak, “And why do you say that, Sugawara-san?”

She huffs, blowing a strand of hair from her face as he starts to work. “Oh, please, as if I don't know a love-bothered person when I see one.” She cranes her neck to look at him, a small frown between her brows. “And I told you times over that it's not 'Sugawara-san', it's 'Shura'.”

He takes her head between his hands, returning it to its previous position. “Alright, then, Shura, are you talking from experience? Because I see no reason why a beautiful woman like you would have love troubles.” He injects a bit of flattery, partly on reflex, partly to erase her suspicions. 

She doesn't give in that easily, though. She flashes his reflection a grin and says, “Well, you have broken quite a few hearts yourself, Koujaku-san, but I see you have finally found someone to give yours to.”

He has to laugh at that, genuine mirth appearing at an implication that _Noiz_ , of all people, is someone he could have an actual romantic relationship with. Ridiculous. And kinda disturbing. Actually, very disturbing. He might throw up, too, after he stops his fit. 

Sugawara, however, patiently waits for him to elaborate, so after it passes, he shakes his head, amused, tells her, “Excuse me, but I don't think that's quite right. It is more someone that... puzzles me.” No point denying anymore, he concludes. 

She only raises her eyebrows at him, so finally he sighs and surrenders. “I'm in a perfectly desirable relationship with someone, someone who, as a person, I actually rather dislike, but we have this sort of silent agreement to... “ he trails off, looks at her to see if she is disgusted, but she just nods, making him have to halt the scissors for a moment, a silent understanding. “And I am... not satisfied with that, while not really knowing why.”

She hums quietly, bemusedly. “Do you know this person very well, Koujaku-san?”

He doesn't really have to think. “No, I wouldn't say so. “

“Would you like to?”

A pause. “Huh.” That is an interesting question. “I... suppose I get curious sometimes.” The snipping resumes. 

More humming. “And how did you end up in this relationship?”

“We had some past, and I wanted closure.”

“Why?”

Another pause. “I... “ _… don't know how to answer that._ Why, indeed? Now that he thinks about it, why did he want something to happen so badly all the time? It was not his first one-night stand, definitely not, and maybe it was with an unpleasant person, as well as his first... gay experience, but why was it so hard to let it go? “I... don't know. I guess stories are just better with proper endings?” Maybe it was because other encounters were initiated with both parties willing and knowing what they were doing, with no impulsive or irrational decisions. He continues cutting once more. 

Her eyes are merciless. “And this is what you call a proper ending?”

Yes. _(No.)_ “It's better than what we had before.” 

She leans back again, smiling up at him. “That seems pretty easy to me. You just want something more.”

He laughs again, but it dies in his throat within seconds. His head starts to spin. His mouth is dry. His muscles start shaking and he has to stop his hand from moving in fear of not cutting her ear off, because it doesn't so much reveal something, as it unlocks it. Koujaku, after all, has a brain and a tendency to overthink things, and there was only one option all this time. 

But that option terrifies the living shit out of him so bad that he didn't even want to consider it. 

Well, that bubble is now gone. 

“Please look forward, Sugawara-san.”

“ _Shura_.”

“Shura.”

He misses her momentary satisfaction, satisfaction of somebody who knows he is right.

 

Later, when she is leaving, she pauses at the door and says, “Thank you, Koujaku-san”, then adds, with a smirk, “She is one lucky girl.” 

She disappears and Koujaku sputters, because _'she'_ and _'girl'_. (Where did those days go?)

 

He cleans the shop and goes home. 

An hour later, there is a knock. 

He lets Noiz in, closes the door behind him, and then stays on the spot, looking at him walking down the hallway. He has a slim figure, narrow hips, broader shoulders, long legs. 

Koujaku is sure he didn't notice this things before. 

He reaches a decision. 

 

Not that time. That time is not the right time. 

_But soon. Soon._

* * *

That night, the memory is just a collage of days, repetitive instances of walking next to each other, playing in the park, with the prominent picture of Aoba's smiling face. 

* * *

It is not that time, nor the next time, nor the one after that. 

About a week passes, and Koujaku has one more dream, this time with the memory of that one time Aoba was crying on the swing and he told him not to lose, but nothing mentionable happens beside Sugawara coming to his shop again. Before she leaves, he grabs her hand, and tells her, “Thank you, Shura.”

 

It is the third time after his epiphany. 

It is raining, and Koujaku doesn't go to sleep. 

He lies wide awake on the customary left side of the bed, listens to the drops, hears when Noiz gets up and starts dressing. 

Something clutches painfully in his chest. 

This is it. 

He reaches out (as he has reached out to Aoba, to Shura, to so many people before, and it is the same, but also different) and wraps his fingers around Noiz's wrist. 

Noiz stops moving. 

For a moment, the room is still. 

“Stay.”

The word is a whisper, barely audible, mingled with soft _thuds_ on the windowsill, and it sounds so disgustingly lame and thick and _needy_ that he wants to slap himself. 

There is no answer. Noiz stands there, with his pants on and his shirt in his other hand, his wrist being held by Koujaku and every dip and curve of his back visible to him, and doesn't talk. 

That something in his chest feels like it is going to burst. 

His loosens his grip. 

Then Noiz, without ever turning to look at him, lets his shirt drop, shuffles out of his pants again, and lies on the other side of the bed, facing away. 

Koujaku throws the sheets off of himself. He feels excessively warm. 

* * *

He doesn't remember where Aoba was, why wasn't he with him, but be how it may, it is only Koujaku who discovers the garden that day. 

He spots it behind a medium-height fence, sees a flashback of his mother in the field. Curiosity gets the better of him, and he searches for an opening. He finds the fence doors cracked, pokes his head in. 

It is a small garden, most that one could manage those days, more that you could manage now. There is a small vegetable section, with lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, a few trees scattered around and an old man watering the plants. He has his back to him, so Koujaku doesn't understand how when he calls out, “It's okay, young man, you can come in.”

He accepts the invitation, somehow manages to stay and listen to the old man teaching him about this and that type of dirt and how you know when herbs are sick until nighttime. The old man smiles at him when he apologizes and says he has to leave now. “Feel free to drop by anytime you like. I don't get a lot of visitors here, you know. It can be lonely.”

Koujaku is back the next afternoon. And the one after that. And then whenever he gets the chance. He learns and watches and enjoys the sun sifting through the leaves. One day, the old man gives him a fistful of beans. “You learned enough from me. Why not try planting them on your own?”

Koujaku does just that, plants them in a remote corner of the old man's garden, waters them and sees them grow. He shows the progress to the old man, who nods, satisfied. 

And then Koujaku has to go, go off to gods know where because his father ordered so, and he has to leave the old man and the garden behind. He doesn't get the time for a proper goodbye. 

When he returns, they tell him that the old man has died. He lived alone, his children were all on the mainland, so the neighbors took care of him. They tell him that, three days before he closed his eyes forever, he said, “Tell the kid to take care of the garden. He'll know what to do.”

But the garden was demolished, something else already planned on being built there, leaving just that remote part of it where Koujaku found his refuge. 

The beansprouts have all wilted. All that was left were the ghosts of the old man and the brat, laughing together. 

* * *

It is the morning after that dream, when Koujaku wakes up drenched in sweat with the green still before his eyes, glances at Noiz who is just getting up, that he knows he is utterly, completely, and royally screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anybody else just use characters from shows they are watching as insert names? Because Daichi, two chapters ago, and Sugawara-san? Haikyuu!! Shura? Ao no Exorcist. 
> 
> Okay, so I don't know if this is a thing in other countries (or other cities, for that matter, now that I think about it), but in lower grades of most of the schools in my town, we had this practical homework of having to grow beans – beans, specifically, because they supposedly grow pretty fast and are very easy to take care of (mine failed to sprout both times I planted them, though... *shrugs*) – and one time I was thinking about the names KouNoi call each other and it somehow connected to this in my head and I don't even know _how_ , but I came down with the idea of that last dream. And then I also read Samantha Shannon's _The Bone Season_ and I think it kind of subconsciously influenced me to turn the dream into a series of dreams. I also need them for something else in the future, so this actually presented itself on a silver platter, even though the whole beansprouts revelation idea does suck a little.
> 
> Yes, I know that canonically Koujaku doesn't touch Aoba's hair because he knows it makes him uncomfortable, but come _on_. The guy more or less did the equivalent of saving his life (saving him from the bullies, you catch my drift), and Aoba was just a child, so I believe that he would have willingly allowed him to do basically anything. (That sounded so creepy. Actually, anything I write with them as kids sounds creepy. Trust me when I say I tried to make Koujaku not sound like a shotacon, I really did, but it is so effing hard. Koujaku, you perv.) And I'm pretty sure that if Koujaku wasn't too nice to take advantage of that, the canon would never have happened. (Seriously, this fic has such a KouAo undertone that I had to tag it.)
> 
> Side note: when I say 'left side of the bed', I mean left not from the standpoint of someone in the bed, but someone, say, watching the scene from the bottom of it. (Warning: Please don't watch guys have sex, it is highly intrusive of their privacy and can be mentally scarring, especially if you're underage... Who am I kidding. We all do that anyway.)
> 
> I think we have reached the gross, touching moment point, so here: I have no idea why you people still stick with me on this, because I've been denying you of any actual KouNoi development and drowning you in Koujaku's introspective denial shit and stuff, but whatever the reason is, thank you. I really appreciate everyone reading this and I still squeal when I see the views count has grown. Every kudos and comment is seen (*cough*and stalked*cough*) and fangirled upon. Constructive criticism is still welcome, though.


	7. In Which Koujaku Nearly Has a Heartattack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well would you look at that. I have nothing to say. Enjoy.

Koujaku goes through the day being... happy. Yes. He is happy. He is happy because he made his mortal enemy-turned-fuckbuddy stay the night. 

... A strange sensation, to say the least. 

Noiz, admittedly, shuffled out of his house as soon as he got up and without a word, but is he is being honest with himself, he didn't expect anything else from him. He still chalks that as a small victory, even though he doesn't know what Noiz thinks happened and does he perceive this as a one time thing or not. 

Koujaku gingerly wraps his head around the idea that it would be pleasant if it was not. He rather likes the feeling. 

 

The first strange thing that happens is that Noiz shows up at his doorstep the same evening. “Strange” because usually there is at least a day between their encounters, and sometimes there are even longer periods of silence that Koujaku can't quite explain. 

Things do proceed in their natural order, though, but Koujaku gets more anxious as the night progresses – he though he was going to have more time to think this through, and he is a bit panicked as to what will he do. 

The only thing that pushes him forward is the feeling that Noiz wants that resolved, too. 

So, once they are laying on their respective sides of the bed, Koujaku, for the first time in ever, turns around to face the brat. He finds him with his head on the spare pillow, eyes closed, but he must have sensed Koujaku watching him, because he grudgingly opens one and peeks at him under a half-lowered eyelid. “... What?”

Koujaku shrugs, or does the equivalent of shrugging while lying down. “Nothing. I was just wondering were you planning on staying here tonight as well.”

Noiz opens his other eye and stares at him, effectively making Koujaku nervous. _How is it even possible to not blink for that long?_ He thinks of turning around and letting the whole thing drop, but just as he is about to put his plan to action, Noiz says, “ _You_ invited me to stay yesterday, you know.”

It is not a yes or a no. It is an inquiry, one that makes it clear for him that Noiz is confused. That he is testing the waters, that he wants to see where does Koujaku want to get with this. That once in their never-ending chase, he is letting Koujaku take the lead. 

And Koujaku very gladly takes the opportunity to torture him a bit longer. Heaving himself onto his back with a fake yawn, he declares, “It was raining yesterday.” He thinks he catches the slightest glimpse of the brat frowning, and has to hide a smirk. 

There is a silence for a few moments after he finishes turning to his other side. Then, he feels the covers shifting and the mattress flattening. He lets this continue for a bit, before, “So are you staying or not?”

It is said quietly, equally quietly as the day before, but this time he gives him a choice. 

“Do you want me to?”

Noiz, it seems, isn't set on caving. 

But neither is Koujaku. 

He produces another half shrug. “Do what you want.”

A wind singer sounds somewhere in the distance. 

The bed dips. 

Koujaku wins this round. 

 

The second strange thing Koujaku notices is the shuffling. 

Not the normal shuffling of a sleeping person, no, but the fact that when he wakes up next to Noiz in the mornings, there is a sudden, basically immediate, almost frantic shuffling as Noiz struggles to get out of bed as soon as humanly possible. 

So Koujaku decides to conduct a little experiment. 

The third time Noiz stays at his (the time gaps between his “visits” have been getting smaller), he makes sure they stay up late. Very late. 

Being an early riser, he wakes up at his internally scheduled time. At first, he does not move, listening until he confirms the even breathing coming from behind his back. Then slowly, painfully slowly, he removes the covers from himself. He pauses. Nothing changes. Exhaling, he sits up. Puts his feet on the floor. Noiz shifts, but doesn't wake up. Koujaku gets up, grabs some clothes, and goes to the bathroom. He comes out some ten minutes later, showered and dressed, and Noiz is, successfully confirming Koujaku's suspicions, still asleep. Koujaku lets a smile pull through. “What an idiot.”

 

An hour later, Koujaku is sitting in the kitchen when he hears thudding coming from elsewhere in the house. He doesn't have to wait long for Noiz to come into view, and he delightfully realizes that he looks more disheveled than he's ever seen him before (and he has seen him in some quite compromising positions). He did manage to pull his pants on, but he has his shirt in one hand, same as that night, and he is panting slightly, as if from the rush he was in. Koujaku looks the sight over with an appreciative eye. _Nice._

He interlocks his fingers beneath his chin and raises an eyebrow. Something like _What are you gonna do now?_

Noiz has one hand on each side of the doorway, and Koujaku can tell from the way he is looking at him that he is angry, the notion dragging an amused smirk to his lips. 

They stare at each other for a while, Koujaku silently prompting for a reaction, until Noiz reluctantly looks away. Koujaku sighs. Kicks a chair away from the table with his leg. “Hungry?”

Wavering. A step backward. Two steps forward. A good pace. 

A minute later, the both of them have already helped themselves to the miso soup. Breakfast is eaten in silence, with the brat pointedly refusing to look at him the entire time it lasts, and Koujaku feels incredibly smug, like, for once, all the strings are in his hands and Noiz has no idea how to take them back. 

Noiz shoves the last bite into his mouth, mumbles a, “Thank you for the food”, and gets up so abruptly his stool practically hits the wall some two meters behind him. He storms out, Koujaku can hear him slam the door shut much more violently than necessary – which isn't all that violent for a normal person, but the fact that it was audible tells Koujaku he is really pissed. He leans back in his chair and scopes some rice from his bowl, the same entertained expression never leaving his face. _This is going to be interesting._

 

Truth be told, Koujaku only adopted the habit of sleeping on his side as somewhat of a defensive mechanism. It is, after all, easier to not to acknowledge something if you don't see it, but when he wakes up in the middle of the night that time, he realizes he is lying on his back. Women always liked that he is a natural back sleeper. They said it is perfect for cuddling, because one could put their head on his shoulder and throw an arm over his stomach facilely, Koujaku muses, dragging his fingers through the hair strands tickling his neck. 

… Wait. 

_What?_

He freezes in the middle of running his fingertips down the blond scalp. _What what WHAT?_

He turns his head a fraction, as much as the one resting on him allows him, and, sure enough, there is Noiz, sleeping peacefully in the exact same pose his previous partners proclaimed the winner. 

He has Noiz draped over him. 

_Hugging_ him. 

In his _sleep_. 

On _his own sleepy accord_. 

Koujaku presses his free hand to his face as that something in his chest that has been prone to acting up more and more frequently lately squeezes all the breath from his lungs, because why is that so fucking cute, sweet mother of – 

_Okay. Stop. No hyperventilating. You might wake him up._

Ecstatic beyond reason, he wraps his arm around the brat's waist. It feels good. 

They wake up fully separated, of course, with Koujaku's arm lingeringly spread to the right side of the bed. He never finds out was that first occasion intentional or not. 

 

It takes a few more times of Koujaku sneaking out of bed for it to not pass as smoothly. He is just about to leave the room when he throws one last look over his shoulder and catches a pair of green eyes boring into his. 

The decision. 

He waits. 

And then, Noiz turns around and wraps himself in the covers more tightly. 

Koujaku exhales, slowly. Turns around. Leaves the room. Makes breakfast. That is the first time they don't eat together – Noiz has, apparently, resigned himself to Koujaku feeding him every time he ends up staying at his place, and Koujaku personally thinks this is good for him, because he vaguely remembers Aoba incredulously exclaiming something about the brat surviving on take-out for more or less its whole life – because this is the first time Noiz doesn't even try to wake up during what most people consider morning, and Koujaku has work to go to. He leaves the food on the table, returns home to find it gone and the dishes washed, which, he admits, surprises him. Pleasantly, but surprises him nonetheless. As he is inspecting the view, his Coil bleeps. _You have one new message. From: Unknown number._

He knows who it is from before he reads it, saving the number as _Brat_ before opening it. 

It is a simple, “Thanks for the meal”, he gives him every time, but it manages to make him smile. 

 

Koujaku is woken up to extra weight, and then woken up again to the lack of it several more times (this is going to give him a heartattack one day, he swears it will, and then Noiz will with full right laugh at him for being such an old man) before he decides to take another test. 

So, after they finish their business, he slithers over to Noiz, presses front to back against him and wraps him in his arms. 

There, he has just spooned Noiz. 

They are spooning. 

And if Noiz doesn't flip out and never returns to his house again, he is probably going to argue about who is supposed to be the big spoon. Or he might not. It is not the first time that he would do something unexpected. Maybe being the small spoon is something he likes. Koujaku has no idea. _Has_ Noiz ever spooned with somebody before, actually? Wow, that thought just made him way more uncomfortable than it should have. But seriously, he still doesn't know anything about his past, and there is a perfectly valid possibility that – 

Oh, for the love of gods, what is he thinking about? There is also a perfectly valid possibility that they are on a verge of a major freak-out here, and Koujaku is seriously beginning to doubt this might have been the wrong move. Sure, their level of mutual hostility has lowered significantly, but maybe this is too big of a step. Maybe he just blew everything up, this tender, delicate balance they managed to establish, the capacity for more, maybe it will all explode in his face right – 

A minute passes. Then another. 

Koujaku waits until he is sure he is not going to get pushed away before he relaxes. He knows Noiz is awake, but keeps silent. That's okay. He can give him time. He can wait some more. 

And besides, they are able to eat together as always in the morning, so who is he to complain?

 

Just like that, everything is going along lovely. Koujaku is one happy hippo, according to Aoba, who tells him so when he finally visits him after a few weeks of minimal contact. He teases him, coos at him to tell him _her_ name (after Koujaku makes a really weak and unconvincing attempt at denying that his – again, according to Aoba – glowing face doesn't have anything to do with a) romance and/or b) a significant someone), but Koujaku smiles (once more, according to Aoba) mysteriously and shakes his head. 

However, there is one tiny thing that is preventing him from living in complete bliss, and that is the fact that those dreams didn't exactly stop and have currently chronologically covered most of his childhood here on Midorijima, drawing alarmingly close to that certain point in his life. 

He grows restless as the inevitable night lurks behind the corner. A couple of times he lives through coming there, meeting his father for the first time, before his eyes snap open and he finds himself breathing heavily. 

He is scared. It has been so long since he last experienced the fear, the guilt, that he doesn't know what to do and how to take it, even though he does know he has to. He has to. One last time. Somewhere in the shaky corners of his heart and mind, he finds his resolve. 

When the day comes to a close, he is terrified. 

He is sitting in his living room, weighing the favorable and unfavorable factors of going to bed early when a knock sounds throughout the hall. 

He opens the door, but when Noiz makes it past him, he voices, “Wait.”

The footsteps stop. Koujaku keeps the doors open and his back to him. 

“I... I'm not really in the mood tonight.”

He never said that before, no matter how many times he actually wasn't in the mood. But he has to make sure Noiz sleeps in his own bed tonight. 

“I'm sorry. But it's just this one time, okay? I promise. One time won't hurt, right?” 

He is rambling now, saying anything and nothing to make him leave. “I will make it up to you, if it's that much of a problem. Brats like you do have unlimited stamina, huh? But I'm sure even you can make it through one night. Just one night. Just – “

He is not sure when Noiz got there, but he is suddenly standing right in front of him. “Hey.”

A hand grabs his jaw, “Look at me”, yanks it down so they are face to face with each other, but Koujaku shuts his eyes, and then Noiz's other hand is on his cheek, his thumb tracing s single wet stripe down it, so he opens them, in shock, in a wave of _No no no_ , why is he letting Noiz see him like this, this is so – 

“Hey! Look. At. Me.”

So Koujaku does, and Noiz cups his face with both his hands now, and kisses him. 

They rarely kiss, maybe strangely, it is always more, which acts as less, and the single kiss right then and there acts as everything. It is a press of lips, close-mouthed, but firm and determined, and maybe even somewhat passionate, and Koujaku grabs his upper arms as if he wants to push him away, except he doesn't, just feels like he should, for some reason, but fuck the reason and fuck the world because it doesn't matter. 

He is crying when they separate, but Noiz keeps his palms planted the sides of his face, and then he smiles. He smiles a real, genuine smile, not the side, knowing smirk, and says, “It's okay. It's fine.”

Koujaku lets himself believe that, lets Noiz lead him up stairs, lets him lie on the bed with him. They sleep facing each other that night, with their foreheads pressed together, and even though it is possibly now and never again, as he is drifting off toward the dreaded dream, Koujaku wonders when did the person certain to make fun of him for crying turn into the one least likely to do so. 

 

Noiz is sitting on the opposite side of the bed when he wakes up. 

He is drenched in sweat. He can feel it soaked into his clothes, the sheets below, hell, his own damn skin and hair. 

He stares at Noiz's back for a while, then asks, “How bad was it?”

Noiz stays where he is, doesn't answer, just raises his arm. There is a red scratch mark on the back of his hand. Koujaku winces. “Pretty bad, huh?”

Noiz lowers his arm. “You were thrashing around. Screaming. Mostly incoherent stuff, but I could make out you saying, “No!” a lot.” He pauses there, and Koujaku already thinks he is finished, before he says, quieter this time, “You pushed me away.” He turns around at that, finally. “I tried to get back to you, but you pushed me away again. Worked very hard to make sure I was couldn't get close. You swung your arms around like crazy. Gave me this.” He points to the mark again. 

Koujaku sighs. He knows what Noiz wants. “How much do you already know?”

He is not looking at him. “Not much. Your mother was a mistress of the head of a yakuza clan. At the age of fourteen, you left the island with her because your father was in a need of an heir, due to his own wife being unable to have children. You returned a few years later... alone.”

He is not stupid, and has probably already connected some of the more obvious things. And Koujaku wants to tell him, but... “Not today.” He smiles tiredly. “Not now. Some other time. Okay?”

Noiz watches him for a few more moments before lying back down. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You remember me saying I was denying you fluff? Here. Have a taste. Have a plate. Have a _bucket_. But seeing how I'm physically and mentally uncapable of writing pure fluff, you get if mixed with Angst. I'm sorry. (I apologize a lot in these notes, don't I?) I think the next chapter will be the brat's point of view that I promised you... pretty long ago. Yeah. 
> 
> Thank you for the lovely kudos and comments! 


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